There are many stories about how a person who did not need anything, who buys things, clothes, equipment, cars, etc., suddenly stops doing this and refuses consumerism, preferring minimalism. It comes through understanding that the things we buy are not us.
“I can’t fully explain why the less I have, the more whole I feel. I remember three days at Boyd Pond, gathering enough for a family of six. And the first solo trip to the west, my bags were filled with books and embroideries and patchwork that I had never touched.
I love buying clothes from Goodwill and returning them when I no longer feel them on my body. I buy books from our local stores and then recycle them into something else. My house is filled with art and feathers and stones, but most of the furniture was already there when I rented it: two tattered chests of drawers, damp pine kitchen cabinets, and a dozen shelves made from milk crates and old lumber. The only things left of my life in the East are my trolley table and a used library chair that Nicholas, my former lover, gave me for my 39th birthday.
My truck is 12 years old. It has four cylinders. There were trips to the casino when I increased the speed to 85 miles per hour. I traveled across the country with a box of food, a stove and a backpack full of clothes. All this is not due to political beliefs. All because it brings me joy, joy mysterious and ordinary.
It’s strange to remember the years when mail-order catalogs filled the kitchen table, when an East Coast friend gave me a canvas bag with the logo “When things get tough, things go shopping.” Most of the $40 T-shirts and museum prints, as well as high-tech gardening tools that I never used, are lost, donated or donated to Goodwill. None of them gave me even half the pleasure of their absence.
I’m lucky. The wild bird led me to this jackpot. One August night a dozen years ago, a small orange flicker entered my house. I tried to catch it. The bird disappeared behind the stove, out of my reach. The cats gathered in the kitchen. I hit the stove. The bird was silent. I had no choice but to let it be.
I went back to bed and tried to sleep. There was silence in the kitchen. One by one, the cats curled up around me. I saw how the darkness in the windows began to fade, and I fell asleep.
When I woke up, there were no cats. I got out of bed, lit the morning candle and went into the living room. The cats sat in a row at the foot of the old sofa. The bird sat on its back and looked at me and the cats with absolute calmness. I opened the back door. The morning was soft green, light and shadow playing on the pine tree. I took off my old work shirt and gathered the bird. The bird didn’t move.
I carried the bird out to the back porch and unrolled my shirt. For a long time the bird rested in the fabric. I thought maybe she got confused and took matters into her own hands. Again everything was the same. Then, with a beat of its wing, the bird flew straight towards the young pine tree.
I will never forget the feeling of release. And four orange and black feathers I found on the kitchen floor.
Enough. More than enough”.