Lately I’ve had a phrase stuck in my mind–smoke and mirrors. A few days ago I mentioned there’s a hole in my bathroom wall that’s covered up by a bookshelf, and this is what I mean. In reality there’s a blemish, but–presto change-o–now you see it, now you don’t. Y’all I use smoke and mirrors constantly. I use furniture to hide animal stains on rugs, magic markers to fill in scuff marks on shoes, and shoes to hide holes in socks. And don’t even get me started on the one-size-up clothes I wear to hide holiday pie.
I’ve even been known to wear concealer to cover up zits.
As most of you know, especially those of you who wear makeup, using smoke and mirrors is an uphill battle. The older you get, the harder you have to try. This morning, afternoon, and evening I helped a friend begin to organize their rather large personal library and, in the process, damaged a book cover. I was flipping through the pages, and it just snapped right in half. “Don’t worry,” my friend said. “Those covers [part of a particular series] are extremely brittle. They just keep falling apart.”
“I guess we all do,” I said.
Whether in terms of physical objects or material bodies, my point is that everything on planet earth (and in the universe) is slowly or quickly deteriorating. Nothing’s permanent. We can fool ourselves into thinking things will last, we will last, but they won’t, we won’t. You know how you can pick up a dandelion parachute (the white tuft thingy full of seeds) and, if the wind is blowing, it will disintegrate before your eyes? Well, this is what’s happening to everything and to all of us. Even if we can’t see it, we’re falling apart. Now, we may hide this fact and–somehow or other–get eighty or ninety years. We may even pass our book collections and antique pieces of furniture on to our children. But sooner or later the jig’s up for both us and our stuff.
As Kansas so aptly stated, “All we are is dust in the wind.”
At one point today my friend said, “Here’s a stack of books I’ll probably never use but am just not ready to get rid of.” Y’all, I totally get it. A few years ago I sold or gave away of over 80 percent of my worldly possessions and yet often still have trouble letting go. I look at a few of my books and pieces of jewelry and think, I’m taking YOU to the grave. Of course, this is nonsense. Ultimately, we don’t get to hang on to anything in this life–not our books, not our jewelry, not our Pink Floyd records. Not even our bodies. Whether by choice or by force, we eventually have to let go.
So all the better if we can, as my gay Uncle Randy used to say, set it free.
Now, does this mean that I’m going to voluntarily get rid of what little I have left (which is a lot by much of the world’s standards)? Does this mean I’m suggesting we all have estate sales? Hell no. But I am suggesting we do whatever we can to let go mentally and emotionally whether or not we let go physically. For me this looks like allowing myself to get excited about and enjoy physical objects (including my body and–sometimes, but not nearly enough, dear lord–the bodies of others), but not allowing myself to buy into the incorrect notion that any one thing or group of things can or will provide me with everlasting happiness. Indeed, I’m convinced that if it all disappeared tomorrow–my books, pictures, and clothes–I’d still have everything I need to live a joyful and content life.
Albeit a naked one.
More and more I think there’s nothing wrong with owning stuff as long as your stuff doesn’t own you. Like, does it add to your life, or take away from it? Is it a burden? This morning I was driving to my friend’s and noticed ALL THE TREES along the way. Like, there wasn’t just one tree or two trees, there was an abundance of them. So I don’t think we can rightly say that God is a minimalist. That being said, he’s clearly not ATTACHED to things either. This evening I watched an absolutely glorious sunset–full of purples, reds, oranges, and yellows. I wanted to hang on, stretch it out, take a picture. Buy a souvenir! Not God, however. He just let it go. Like, No big deal. Let’s forget it ever happened. Because he gets how things work here. Everything that’s born, dies. Period. The wind carries us all away.
Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)
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For I am a universe–large–like you are, and there is room here for all that we contain. An ego, of course, is small, and it is disgusted and humiliated by the smallest of things. But a universe is bigger than that, much too big to judge itself or another, much too big to ever question how bright it is shining.
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