Slowing climbing a flight of stairs with a bookcase and shelves pressing against my back, the weight of Atlas’ globe upon me I began to think. “Why do I need this stuff?” It was a perfectly reasonable thought to ponder. Indeed, why did I need it? Just then an image flashed before me of a field of wind-blown grass and bright vacant skies — forests of deep green calling me to their interior as a siren calls her sailors. The reality of my own sickening fascination with stuff that was completely irrelevant to a life lived cut me to the bone. Perhaps lives were meant to be performed on the stage of nature. Gaia herself kissed me over and over again with a lipstick of rosy red, sweet and sticky. An epiphany came that burdensome accouterments were even less important than I’d reckoned. A life supplied with an overwhelming number of useless things: stuff.

This is usually revealed in the event of a move. It isn’t until one engages in that modern, perennial ceremony like an ancient Scythian, nomadically reestablishing residence somewhere else. And the question of why we move more frequently than, say, our fathers or grandfathers did can only be answered with anecdotal quips pertaining to our economy or some such reason. But I digress. The point here is that stuff is stifling. Consider the mini-storage industry. I don’t have precise numbers, but from what I understand they make somewhere in the millions on simply storing stuff for people. And what profits a man if he gains the world and loses his stuff? For our souls seem to be interconnected with what we own. Instead of owning it, it owns us.

I propose a newer emancipation proclamation against these shackles that enslave most in Western society. Let us stand against this non-conscious threat that, like terrorists, infects us with the fear of ‘doing without it.’ What would happen to our environment if everyone threw away all that was unnecessary to him or her? I’m really not sure, but clearly ‘stuff’ has not reached the size or status of our natural environment. Or has it? Clearly there are more forest ferns than factory fabrics; more garden groves than gaskets or gadgets. Or at least I hope so. For the only reason they keep making stuff is that there’s a market for it. We want stuff, like an addict wants a controlled substance. But where are the stuff methadone clinics? Maybe there aren’t any. Maybe, just maybe, once we come to the point where we find we need help, some will become available. And I have a faint suspicion that what we really want is something other than stuff. It’s just that stuff is easier to get.