Shredification

Certain sons and daughters asked to stow their overflow with us so they might follow their dream to far off places. Since I’d begun to clear out the glacial accumulation of stuff from our attic and basement awhile back, inspired by the dismantling of my dad’s place, I was less than aligned to the prospect of yet more stuff. But family can hardly be denied when room can be made.

I proceeded to throw out, donate, recycle and shred a heap of my belongings prior to the influx of storage boxes. Halfway through the journals, our paper shredder let out a prolonged squeal under the onslaught of words, and abruptly died.

I might consider this a sign to halt the decimation of beauty, in light of Goethe’s lines on letters (and what is a journal if not letters to one’s self?).

“We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverably for ourselves and others.”
Goethe

Surely this genius from another time has the knack for inflicting guilt on pack rat journalistas everywhere. But really, would hypothetical future readers gain much if they even found time to probe my delving mind?

My theory - and I grant you, I am no expert on humanity - is that we’re each born into a mind that wants to cross boundaries. Mom and Dad and village can only provide so much point of view. Our brain needs wider fields in which to romp. Which we find, say, writing. Or climbing trees. Or staging plays.

We find playgrounds when we consume art too, which coincidentally gives us less time and gold for loading up on unnecessary stuff.

If making or partaking of art satisfies the mind’s will to fly, and if sinking into a cluttered life clogs the urge to think new thoughts, it behooves the human creature to take down the tent and clean out the cage (thank you, Tommy Smothers) with bold regularity.

As for generations to come, deprived of our burgeoning thoughts? Dear Goethe, let them dance with their own élan.

Painting by Cornelis Norbertus Gysbrechts