Let me take a moment to be cartoonishly defensive of my own pack-rat nature:
When I die (hopefully not for many decades) someone is going to have to come into my nest and throw out all the useless garbage I collect as sentimental curios. And for the period of time between my death and when that person or people come to haul away my treasured things to their own final resting place in the landfill, my space will stand as a physical reminder that I, an individual, lived upon the Earth and that my will endures, even in death, through the rearrangement of physical matter. Perhaps if the person or people who have come to pack away my beloved valuables are people I knew in life they might be reminded of me, reminisce over my having been a part of their lives, and this slow destruction of my temple will be as a second death. And perhaps the pain of that moment will crystallize their memories of me that my spirit should, in a way, live on through them until their own deaths, and live on through the people they affect, the entire sum of human history and experience cascading through generations until the final, inevitable end.
So through my living tomb I am made immortal.
But when this fucker dies, and the city comes to collect his body after the neighbors complain about the smell, and whatever cleaning company they contract with has scrubbed away the last remains of his festering rot, and the Lysol covers up the last of his smell, it will be as if he never lived at all.
[sincerely though, personal austerity is fine if you want to do that, I just hope everyone has some outlet for self-expression]
Yeah, I’ve actually got a family member who’s a hoarder and it genuinely sucks. He hasn’t let anyone in his house in a decade. Takes good care of his cats though.
I’m not a hoarder myself. I am genuinely a pack-rat in that I own a lot of books and movie memorabilia that I don’t really need anymore but probably won’t throw away unless I absolutely have to, like if I move. I expect that a psychological trauma could easily make me a hoarder, but who knows?
Hmm
Yesterday I realized that Braavos from ASOIAF, the city/state founded by escaped slaves, are the world bankers (home of the Iron Bank). So, is that a “wink” of some kind to jewish people? Am I trying too hard tp make the connection? Is it an inocuous “wink”? Are the faceless men the Mossad?
I always read Braavos as a sort of vaguely Italian/Mediterranean mashup, more Medici bankers than Jewish bankers
“I don’t deserve a bed frame” cracked me up real good.
Oh cool incels are blaming me for traits they imagine I have again.
It’s not women that want you to buy stuff you dumbass, it’s capitalism.
TAKE THE TAG OFF THE CHAIR
