A Valediction for the Inanimate

I looked down into the porcelain eyes of the Buddha. I ran my hands over his cheeks, his impassive smile, the tight bun atop his head. He looked back at me from behind a coat of glossy red paint, awaiting judgment. I thought of the true Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, of his teachings, his sermons about desire and about want, about trying to remove oneself from the cycle of suffering that binds us all together, suffering based on our inability to ever truly satisfy our insatiable desire. I wondered, did I want this porcelain Buddha head? Or was that just the desire speaking?

Over the past few days, I have gone through a process of shedding my skin; that is to say, I have been slowly getting rid of many of my possessions, objects that, for the past four years or so, I have defined myself by. I have gone through hundred of pages of writing, ranging from haphazardly recorded class notes to meticulously polished essays, and I have rid myself of a great deal of this work. (Those things I found irreplaceable I have deposited into a file folio, for later consideration.) I have considered strongly my ability to exist independently from my terraced bookshelf, from my black faux-leather office chair, from my Dieux Du Stade calendar with all the impossibly attractive Frenchmen. I have been on a tear to rid myself of a great number of thing--partially as house cleaning, and partially as soul cleansing. I, like so many others I'm sure, began to feel burdened by my possessions, as though my things were owning me; I began to imagine myself buried under a mound of sentimental but useless objects, incapable of freeing myself due to a lack of sheer will. I knew that I had to somehow thin the herd. I knew that I wouldn't be satisfied until I got rid of some of the clutter that for so long occupied so much of my space. So I gave away my terraced bookshelf; I put my office chair in the campus exchange; I bid adieu to the many men of Dieux Du Stade.

I have put my hands on nearly every one of my possessions over the past week or so. Some of these things I have moved from one room to the next for four years now, until I could have the strength to pass them along to someone else–or more often, before I could simply throw them away. By placing my hands onto these things, however, I have had to consider them individually; I have had to pause and ask myself, "what is this object, and what does it mean to me? What will I lose by throwing this out? What would I gain by keeping it?" In this way I have had to weed through each and every object in my room. Thirty-five dollars in Canadian currency–keep it; I may return some day. A mousepad bearing the logo of the Ithaca College Office of Multicultural Affairs–pass. I don't even have a mouse, after all. An e-flat bugle I snagged from my band director in high school–keep; when am I ever going to find another e-flat bugle? Each thing seems to have its own life, its own story. The lifeless objects–this spiral full of notes on biology, that overdoor coat hanger–don't sing out to me, they don't reverberate in my hands... but there are other items, ones whose value is undeniable, which send sensations through my fingers and into my core, resonating with their undeniable worth. I pick up the blade end of a broken Ithaca Crew oar (a "borrowed" object that never found its way back to the Ithaca boathouse) and it immediately fills me with the familiar sensations I knew and loved while I was a rower at Ithaca. I can almost feel the backsplash against my skin as I hold the truncated oar shaft; I can feel the burning in my legs and my lungs that I always knew would set in by the third 500. I pace the oar back down, and it rests, inert. But there is something more there, and I feel it every time my hand comes in contact with it.

I have passed over surely hundreds of items in the past week, judging the worth of each thing. Which of these four watches do I really need to keep; do these senior photos of my high school friends retain any sense of their former sentimentality; what value does this Family Fun Run 5k t-shirt hold for me? I turn each of these objects over in my hands, and I think of not only these things in my life, but of the people, as well. If I were to place hands on each of my friends, acquaintances, peers, professors, respected or revered idols, which of them would I keep? Which of them would sing out to me with the clarion tone of that broken oar; which of them would hit a dull note, and be fated to be forgotten?

Then I think of all the people who have been so important to me over the years: My mother, who held me when I was first born, who made sure that nothing would harm me until I was old enough to protect myself; her partner, who came into my life when I was still young, and would–tentatively at first–embrace me like I was her own son; my friends, who have given me a place to belong and a sense of family even so far from home; my professors who've embraced my intellectual interests, who have bolstered my academic pursuits with enthusiastic and unwavering support. All of these people at one time put their hands on me, like I have done with each of my material possessions, and they have turned me over in their hands, considered my accomplishments and my shortcomings, and have decided, for one reason or the next, that I was worth keeping, worth encouraging, worth saving from the "to be discarded" pile.

The porcelain Buddha knows, however, that he is not meant to be kept here. A vague paradoxical object–meant at once to remind us that we should escape from want while at the same time existing as an object to be desired–he knows his path is moving forward towards some new station. I allow myself to be removed of this covetous desire, to let the Buddha go and to tell myself I don't need him to bookend my collection of modern drama. Nevertheless, as he sits there in the pile along with an ill-conceived crescent folding chair, some somewhat sickly looking throw pillows, and a cracked plastic tissue-box cover, looking plaintively at me with his glossy eyes, I feel a slight pang of loss.