my old TV is worth exactly $100. nice, flat screen 36inch tube TV. 150 lbs. I dont even want to take it to my beach house to replace the really shitty tv there, cause i dont want to carry it up the stairs (though in my defense, they are very steep and very narrow). When I was researching how to price it, I could not find any big tube TVs at circuitcity.com or bestbuy.com or crutchfield.com. A guy bought it, practically crapping his pants with glee, that he was getting a nice big TV cheap. I helped him get it into his Expedition, i guess he had help getting it out.
I carted Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations around for 22 years. I read it once, freshman year, and could not remember what it was about. I had to read Wikipedia to be sure I didn’t want to keep it. By pitching Ludwig I am abandoning something, but its not his influence. Hauling Ludwig around imbued him with value. That value was imbued by professors who understood him far better than I ever didn’t, and who imbued in me a desire to impress them by collecting their valuable books. I have no idea why Ludwig was valuable to me; it was surprisingly easy to leave him in a worn cardboard box on the curbside of the Goodwill store, along with David Hume and Friedrich Hegel and a Java 1.2 guide . The Goodwill guys didn’t give a crap enough to greet me, they left a pad of tax receipts on the wall for me to tear off. What some call one of the top 5 philosophy works of the 20th century, and assorted other works, netted $50 in tax writeoffs. Ludwig will hopefully find his way to the $.50 bin somewhere.
I have baby things that are beautiful and inspiring and kept our baby safe and close and secure and full of the smiles of a newborn child, and i can not get $20 for them. I can list them on Ebay and with fees and shipping net $18, or deal with some asspod on Craigs List and get $14. They all found good homes with friends of friends and the IT guy who fixes my constantly-broken laptop, and they made me gush with well-wishes for the new parents, somehow drilling into an estrogen source i did not know i had. A nearly brand new humidifier that we bought for $45 before G was born and used twice I reaped a windfall at $25. An extremely-dusty but otherwise-perfect car cover will be sent back to Nashville in Bette and Bob’s dirty laundry.
The prospect of moving forces you to cull, to really evaluate just what to keep. for those of you following, the move has blown up, yet again. I am becoming like Brett Farv (spelled incorrectly, as a sign of disdain) with my constant “we’re moving, we’re not moving, we’re playing for the Jets” bullshit.
The culling is not limited to stuff. Habits, patterns, fears, confidences, memories and skeletons. The books, the pictures, the mollies in the drywall and the spunk on the garage floor: the things you can’t remember why they made you smile or pang with regret without those things – off they go. It hurts immediately, then its very liberating. You are your past completely, and not at all. Sartre said that, basically. I kept him.
A buffer of happy consciousness, a spot-checked memory, a plastic bubble with a warm blankey, a plan for a path to follow. A manifestation of the will, as Nietzsche would say. I kept lots of Nietzsche. I don’t see anything wrong with it, self-improvement of the mind and the soul and the capacity for nimbleness. Code review. Wisdom. I need the strength if I am throwing myself into change. And its always changing. I am getting an epoxy-painted garage floor first thing when we finally move.
Jo’s ladder – 8th grade woodshop, 1982
