The Reader Travels

The first time I walked into my house, it was filled full with someone else’s stuff. The couple who lived here had remained childless and were nearing retirement age. The wife’s mother had lived here with them until she died, and they were alone again, ready to downsize, put everything into storage and move into a one-bedroom apartment.

They had two households full of stuff crammed under this roof, theirs and mother’s, rows of big gray filing cabinets junking up the space that would become my green room, and an unhealthy obsession with big framed mirrors that covered every wall, reflecting and magnifying the wretchedness of all the stuff. It was a house of great energy, choked in Feng Sh*t.

Back on the road with Anne Tyler, Earthly Possessions is a novel about a woman so burdened by all the stuff in her life, she doesn’t so much mind it when she gets kidnapped by a bank robber and heads out with him on a grand road trip to Florida. Like the people I bought my house from, Charlotte Emory lives in a house with two households worth of crap. She’s stifled, trying to climb over furniture and photographs, in search of some tiny space for her self.

I love Tyler’s description of the state of Charlotte Emory’s house and her life before she was freed at gunpoint. If I wanted to leave it all, I’m glad to say I wouldn’t have nearly as many possessions to weigh me down. Of course, it also means I’m not as desperate to get out.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 25th, 2009 at 10:17 am and is filed under US and Canada, road tripping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.