I traveled to New Orleans at the end of March for two weeks to sell my car and wrap up some loose ends.
Loose ends: like selling chairs and mirrors a friend had kindly stored for me, like paring down the 200 books I’d left behind, selecting the most important books to send to my mom’s house where they will now live, selling the camping gear I’d kept in the trunk of my Corolla for an ex-boyfriend who has since moved to Barcelona.
It’s just stuff, I tell myself. It’s just stuff. And yet I shipped to my mom’s house a box that contains sheets from the house I grew up in and the cloth hangers that used to hang in my mom’s closet. A book my dad once read and underlined. These are my few sentimental things, objects I’m stubbornly hanging onto, mementos of my childhood home.
I threw away my case full of CDs, most of them cracked after two decades dying in a hot car. I can still remember the men who burned CDs as gifts, their handwritten titles.
A man in Paris mocked me recently for how few books I have in my current apartment, which hurt my feelings. My rebuttal: I own hundreds of books in New Orleans and Richmond! But you can’t bring your personal library overseas!
I have my copies of high school books, like The Awakening and Edith Hamilton’s Mythology and Their Eyes Were Watching God. I have the marked-up copies of Jazz and The Bluest Eye and The Bell Jar that I taught to high school and college students for 15 years. I have the copy of The Idiot (Dostoevsky, not Batuman) that I read on my first trip to Europe with my then-fiancé, and which still had the Greek ferry ticket from that trip as a bookmark.
Or, had. I’m not so sure anymore.
If you want to be a digital nomad or you want to live abroad,
you must end your love affair with stuff.
Sure, you can store things. Friends will offer their closets, parents their homes. You might pay monthly for a storage unit. But that’s a temporary solution.
In reorganizing my things these past weeks, I realized there is one beloved item I can’t find: a handpainted mug by the artist David Gurney that I bought at my college job, Hands Gallery in San Luis Obispo. I’m not sure whose house it’s in, or why it’s not in my storage drawers at my mom’s house.
So I have lost—or let go of—one mug, many books, some pieces of art. Furniture, CDs. Apartments and cities. I have lost some friendships. Some love.
When I was in New Orleans I was struck by the amount of things unhoused people have accrued in their encampments under the I-10. I’m sure it’s stuff that feels very important, that creates a sense of home or identity. Why are we like this? Why do we measure a person by the things they own? Why does a lot of plastic make us feel better about ourselves? (Just FYI, a lot of cheap clothing—like polyester, acrylic, nylon, organza, faux leather, and faux fur—is plastic.)
Anyway, I’m part of the problem, because I make my home in apartments and then destroy the home I made, over and over again. I buy, sell, throw out. (And yes, of course, I find it all very romantic to keep starting over, am perhaps addicted.)
For the traveler, the adventurer—at least they are trying to practice the art of letting go, of living lightly. Sometimes it feels like you either love the things you have accrued, or you love the life you have created. Well, for me it’s split in two like that, but maybe not for everyone.
I’ve learned to let go, even when I didn’t mean to. I have now bought two—two!—permanent bracelets (meaning there’s no clasp, they’re welded around your wrist) and both have broken. The chain breaks, and there’s no way to get it back on besides another welding appointment or paying a jeweler to attach a clasp. You’d think I’d learn. Even $130 14 karat gold bracelets welded to your wrist won’t last. You’re left with a thin strand of gold with no potential.
And that’s my warning to those who feel the tug in their hearts to go: get ready, first, to stop loving the safety of objects.
Get ready to lose things, people, places. As Elizabeth Bishop wrote, losing is an art form. You are the only person who defines you, who will make your life feel fulfilled. Try being unattached. Try holding your palm open to the world instead of closing like a fist on what you want to keep. But maybe we all should be doing this, little by little, even if we just want to stay home.
Community Guide
Speaking of reflecting on the things we own, Paris-based writer Carrie Chappell—a friend of mine, and thus, if you’re reading this, a friend of yours now, too—is now writing on Substack! Her newsletter, Spiritual Material, will touch on each piece in her wardrobe, all of which are second-hand. I highly recommend subscribing if you’re interested in an in-depth look at living (and growing a family!) abroad, where to go thrifting in Paris, the secrets of buying second-hand, interviews with some of the Parisians who work in les retoucheries and les cordonniers, and beautifully poetic essays that are at once meditative and intellectually muscular. Here’s a peek:
Needed to read this. Your words have moved me as I am trying to unclench my attachment to the home I've created in New Orleans in exchange for finally taking my leap into nomadism. I really appreciate these words and probably will now come back to them often. Thanks Kristen. 🤍
Since I've reached an age where death is the next stop, I'm trying to detach. My climate-conscious offspring and their offspring are much better at living with limited "stuff". The youngest two grands got high school prom dresses for less than $10 at thrift stores. But I'm also a sentimental old fool.