The End of Certain Things

Certain things must go. It's what happens when you move. Certain things don't make the cut and this we call purging. We call it cleansing; we call it de-cluttering--simplifying.

For instance, Tiffany has decreed that my "Kiss" poster will not make the walls of our new apartment. I bought this poster in the West Village when I was in graduate school. It's a photograph by Tanya Chalkin and it shows two women, lying on their sides in bed wearing t-shirts and underwear, locked in a soft-looking kiss. When I was growing up, I had Albert Einstein hanging on my bedroom wall. Putting the "Kiss" poster up for the first time felt long over-due. And now, apparently, it's long over-done. Although it was demoted to the back of a closet door immediately after Tiffany and I moved in together, it is being demoted further still--to the curb. This is okay.

Some other items aren't making the move either. For instance, we are parting with a few of the surprising number of Audrey Hepburn prints we acquired after people discovered we loved the movie "Breakfast at Tiffany's." Likewise, it's time to say good-bye to the copy of Matisse's "Blue Nude II" that hung on my dorm room wall (approved for tucking-away, however, are the hand-drawn "Blue Nude II"s that I, my brother and various of my friends made in a spontaneous "who-can-draw-the-best" competition held in that dorm room). On a somewhat grander scale, we will also be relinquishing one of the two 1970s-era chairs that Tiffany's sister bought at Goodwill (unfortunately, the one most likely to go--because of the gigantic gash in its fabric--is also the most attractive. It has several colors in a rectangular pattern making it "funky" while the other one is merely orange).

I can purge with the best. Stuff is just stuff, after all. Except some stuff isn't. Like the cigar box with tiny corked glass vials containing bits of flowers (my grandfather and grandmother collected those bits in the 1940s on a cross-country road trip for his PhD research). Or the little hand-made turtle, frog, fish, butterfly and chicken bobble-heads that line our desk (my mom has sent me those over the years in tissue-wrapped packages stuffed with good-smelling candles and chocolate bars). Or the wooden heart that my friend Robert's father carved. Or the glittery, miniature ruby-red slipper my dad gave me (I grew up in Kansas). In the end, we make room for clutter like this because it means a new apartment is now home.

Certain things must go. Other things must be carried.