emerson

Letting it all go

Photo by Calvina Yang Nguyen

By Kendra Smith

I’m starting to think about downsizing. Sure, it has something to do with tax season and all the dire predictions about the economy. But it has just as much to do with a desire to have less, to simplify. When it takes me 10 minutes to find something I’m looking for, I think I probably have too much stuff. When I start to forget more than I can remember, I know it.

That’s why I’m intrigued by Australian Ian Usher, who has put up his life for sale, ala John Freyer, the Iowa artist who auctioned his possessions on eBay and wrote a 2002 book, All My Life for Sale, about it. The reason for Usher’s downsizing—a messy divorce—is more tragic than pragmatic, but the questions it raises are universal. The key one is posited in a poll on Usher’s home page: Could you do it?

Like Freyer, Usher is offering it all: the car, a motorcycle, his jetski and kitesurfing gear, the house and everything in it. “I take nothing with me,” Usher writes on the website (note: his future plans are to travel the world, not to disappear from it).

Since, ultimately, we take nothing with us, I have to wonder why our stuff is so important to us, and why a simpler life is still a choice outside the norm. These men challenge us with the notion that we are not our stuff. And yet, in this age of consumption, many of us must believe that our possessions, what we choose to surround ourselves with, do say something about what we value and believe in.

Could you do it?

Links:
Telegraph article
Life4Sale
All My Life For Sale

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Blossom

Magnolias, by Muffet

By Dale Conour

We’re disappointed in our leaders is the refrain, yet again, as we endure another season of presidential campaigning.

The irony in that statement seems so strong today, walking past spring blossoms of flowering cherry, camellia, magnolia.

The results wouldn’t be nearly so impressive if only a few of those buds opened up to the sun.

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