Over the Ocean, Through the Woods

I leave for Japan in twenty-five days. I'm moving to Akita province, pretty much as northerly and westerly as you can get. Still waiting on the details of my placement, aka, where exactly in this relatively large, yet unpopulated, province I am moving to, what age I'm teaching, what my apartment is like, whether I need to get an International Driver's permit, etc.

Right now, I'm in the process of preparing for my leaving as much as I can without really knowing too much about where I'm going. This includes getting rid of stuff that I won't be taking with me...which is actually quite a bit of stuff. It's amazing how much I can get rid of when I look at it and think, will this be relevant to my life in the next one to three years? If the answer is yes, it gets put back. If the answer is no, it goes away. I only need to emotionally let go of an item once before I can say goodbye for good. Once it goes in the get-rid-of pile, I pretty much forget about it. A sign that things are highly disposable to me? Probably.

Although I'm disposing of piles and piles of clothes, I have only been able to part with a handful of books, maybe ten, and some of those were because I had two copies of the same thing. Two copies of all of Shakespeare's sonnets? Not necessary. So one went away. This whole process is making me realize how much stuff I have, how much stuff I utilize on a daily basis. It's a lot. And a lot of it is just that disposable. I either don't really need it, or it can be easily replaced by something just like it. There is a lack of truly unique stuff in my possession. I have more blank notebooks than filled ones, I have more CD's I don't listen to than ones I do. It's materialism at its finest, partially because I am a marketer's ideal prey. I buy things with cool names and flashy advertising because I can, because I do things that make me feel good about doing them.

But things are disposable. I forget what I have more than I remember. And now I'm weeding through things in stages, parting with things in waves, piles at a time. Because I have twenty-fives days left before my entire life gets packed into two suitcases and a matching duffel bag. Stuff takes up space, sometimes more space than life does. I'm trying to reverse that.