I've learned over time to do away with more and more "prized possessions". When you're younger, the thrilling gift of having any kind of living space of your own is commemorated by your ability to furnish and decorate it, as elaborately as you can in even the smallest space, in what you might even perceive the sparsest way. Years later, to your astonishment, you're just an episode away from Hoarders.
After just upwards of twenty years of residence in a charmingly rustic, single-occupancy flat, a home that ushered me from ambivalent youth to insecure middle age, it was my decision to move, upon a relationship successfully turned domestic, that sent me into the future shock of excavating my buried life. Most often, it's upon a sad passing that a loved one's belongings and possessions are suddenly unearthed and sorted out, a round of violent, psychological dodgeball commencing, met by the brusque trashing of belongings unobserved or recalled. I incurred the very same, with one unique difference. I was very much alive. Had been and still was.
The takeaway was that my new life would bear no trace of hoardership. Clutter-proofing would not wait for spring. In our new abode, my wife of several years and I have generally made good on that, or would have to in our small space. My music collection, still maintained on compact disc, is mindfully not a closet's worth, but rather a small storage box and minor shelf space. Obscure books are my treasure, but they are thankfully not quite so exorbitant as acquisitions, and once I'm done with one, I make a point of gifting it rewardingly to one who will enjoy it the same, save for the dozen I'm savoring for long commutes. Clothing always calls for a requisite amount of excavation, and forming donations of any size are a rewarding ritual. My narrowed-down library of twentieth-century TV Guides remains as such, as those have kept their place in my existence as a sort of compass, one to which I'll comfortably return often to put my existence on Earth in agreeable perspective. Were I beamed for any reason onto the deck of Starship Voyager, I'd make out just fine so long as I'm equipped with those.
Beyond all that, there remains one singular possession of questionable necessity that I have not yet seen fit to discard. And it seems to unavoidably be taking up more and more space in most obtrusive way. That's my cherished intellect.
Growth is just a fact of a human organism's life. Growth in height discontinues at a young age, but then other parts and portions expand, which then call for the mindful effort at maintenance as necessary. It's been said that any extraneous effort to "keep the brain active" is always a good thing. Puzzles, strategy games, and things of that sort. Then, there's those of us who are challenged enough to that end professionally each day to know we've got that preventative end covered. The brain is pretty important.
But just how important is "intellect", or the capacity to function as an "intellectual"..? A cousin of mine is in digital hardware sales. The last time I visited his palatial home, it was futuristically furnished with a widescreen monitor, large or small, fitted onto the central wall of no less than any room in that winding house. I took note of it, and he sheepishly admitted...."Nature of the business...."
Intellectuality is indeed the nature of many businesses and professions. It's not just a capacity, but rather it's more of an elite uniform, worn by an immensely sophisticated order. I can't name them all here, but probably anything highly academic, scholars, history authors, attorneys, M.D.s, PhD's, entertainment critics, perhaps those who care to prove themselves greater than their dollar worth, as my mother's one-time outspoken brother-in-law sought to during one of his many unemployments. His sister would counter him with "you're unemployed, you're not entitled to an opinion.."
I may not be interested in trying to disguise my worth to others in any way. Other than myself, of course (and probably in-turn to others in some inflated self-image)
But as we all learn in our upbringing, your dollar worth is not your human worth. You get older and learn the other side of that quadratic equation which is, "yeah, but your dollar worth is what pays for your human dignity.." Once you learn how to more-or-less balance that mental see-saw, you're in business. My immediate form of living does not require any sort of intellectual bent. It requires a responsible, reasoning mind. I'm grateful to maintain one of those. The job, and the mind. There are times though, much as I love, cherish and nurture it to this day, I could use a little less of the intellect.
My mother, rest her soul, was what one might call a "pseudo-intellectual". Maybe. I don't even know what qualifies one as a legitimate intellectual, beyond a master's degree and maybe a PBS talk show. But for someone who's daily grind consisted for nearly thirty five years of "administrative assistantry", a role more traditionally defined as "secretary", a conversation with her at any interval might have proven her capable of marching into a lecture hall at City College and delivering the history of eighteenth-century literature.
She was born and raised during those lean FDR years, youngest in a Coney Island family of five. Jewish both in origin and in practice. Her eldest brother was highly devout in his prayer and religious study. He would go on to become a successful C.P.A, and co-founder of his neighborhood's temple. My mother's exploits were not the same, for reasons of design and fate. She had the wounded soul and gift of a writer, like those mid-century contemporaries whose works she would devour. Yet no half-ended creations on her part would ever see completion or publication. College would not be an option for her in the late 1940s. She needed to leave home, and establish her freedom. No high-school graduating female back then was less than encouraged by her guidance counselor to seek full-time office work after the diploma. She did.
But in the young, voracious woman's hunger for knowledge, and envy of the collegiate fantasy land, later shameful of her lack of official academia, her resolve came in acquiring every and any enticing bound piece of literature there was, and maintaining in mind the best, to sharpen her game at early socio-political intellectual nok-hockey with the most outspoken surrounders of the early 1950s. Conversationalists loved her. Through her many years of failed marriage, de-railed business venture, alcoholism and truncated recovery, precarious health, and the trepidatious vigil of the next federal aid check in the mailbox, no one left a visit with this woman any less than thoroughly entertained.
Among her last words to me before her blessed, sudden death at age sixty-five: "This fucking gift is all I've ever had..."
It must have been a pretty deluxe one. She had to be out of my life entirely for at least twenty years before I could genuinely acknowledge the growth of my own. Certainly nothing astonishing, given the genealogy. And hardly do I take it for granted. Having attended college in the 1900s, put to laborious "liberal arts" curriculums of text that seemed to have zero applicable purpose in preparation for one's functional paycheck life of almost any sort (today a lamented pandemic, put to constant "Liberal Arts-shaming" by noted economists..), my guiltiest pleasure now is not a bucket of double-fudge Ben & Jerry's, but in the same vein a tome of sociological theory in historical view, the vintage publications amongst some I'd been put to back then. Except now my tastes have been acquired. No exam. No interminable lecture to stay awake through. No grade points. Just the fulfillment of finally absorbing the stuff I once thought might be interesting one day when there's no exam next week.
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