I had a table, a big, beautiful table. And a desk. Strong, commanding chairs. One of the hardest things about moving is losing my objects. I have forever lost these specific material things, and am temporarily without my tools: my needles and pins, scrap pieces of fabric and yarn, my patterns, iron, paints and jars full of buttons.
I move and I lose everything. I lose all the beauty I make, and all the objects that hold my scent. All the rich, thingy beings with which I was intimately related.
The tiny coffee table I bought for $7 that I used as a space for a seated altar. On it I had placed a giant, obscenely heavy mirror that I would stare into. Collections of stones, small notes, and keepsakes would sit ahead of the mirror and on the table. Two yoga blocks were the perfect accessory to raise me to just the right height for the altar/coffee table.
The soft, supple wooden floor that supported us all. And in the other room, the dining table I used as a work desk, so generously offering its surface for making. The dresser on which sat the rest of my trinkets, and which sometimes gathered dust, while the drawers always overflowed with too many clothes. I am lost without these friends and the space they gave me. I have lost my orientation. The single wooden chair I found at a rummage sale that gave me delightful perspective. The intention with which these objects and I found each other. The perfectness of our union.
How hard it was to part with that short coffee table despite its nil economic value. How I long now for a chair I chose. How I desire for keeping such things in my life, nurturing them, getting to spend the rest of my years with them, until death do us part. How I despise the disposability with which I am expected to treat them. How I resent the ease with which I am supposed to give them up and move on.
“They are just material objects, you know. Are you that attached to things?”