Adam Blatner

There has been a hiatus in my blogging as I’ve been out to visit family. During this time I’ve become more sharply aware of my finitude, and the need to divest my stuff. It’s interesting stuff. I’m a stuff-aholic—mainly books, but also puppets and song books and little doll-like thingey-o’s (in Yiddish, “Tchatch’-ke-les,” little toys.

Things and books are precious because to me they’re interesting, and I’m looking at that word and what it represents. It grabs me, perhaps the way alcoholics talk about that which makes them relaxed and happy. Interesting.

Saying it, I become aware that that’s my hook: “Interesting.” I’ve been very interested in a number of things. Interestingly (ha ha!), I have little interest in a goodly number of things that many if not most people are interested in: travel, fine foods, entertaining, sports, etc. My own interests are perhaps quirky, and I’m changing in my emotional investment in many of them—and perhaps will in several more as time goes on! At present, it almost hurts to contemplate this, which somehow tells you something. So downsizing and fighting a stuff-addiction is a process. I call it the “Gollum” complex, for J.R.R. Tolkien’s character in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the creepy cave-guy who felt so compelled by the Ring of Power that made him Invisible.