So here we are, threshold of a brave new world, ready to unveil magnificent yet somehow, for decades, completely hidden talents to a loving yet unsuspecting public. I can feel the excitement building already.
Do people explain in their posts whatever it is that makes them do it? Do they talk about goals and aspirations, the greater good, a message of depth and significance that the world needs to hear? If that's normal, I'm already in trouble here. I'm writing this because a friend suggested I do it, and because it might be fun, and it's called "From the Mental Basement" because as much as anything else it's yet another attempt at decluttering. I don't have a Big Message. No doubt there are things in the basement that someone else might find useful, but it's equally certain that there's a lot of stuff in there that is just junk. Either way, diamonds or dirt, I need to get it out of there before I lose track of Nixon's hat size, or forget how to put pants on. What you take and what you leave from this garage sale is your business; it's always nice when someone turns out to be very happy to take something off your hands that you were dying to get rid of anyway. Just don't sue me when you run out of storage space and suddenly forget how to drive. When you're on the freeway. Probably the best way to get even, just like in a real world garage sale, is to trade me stuff that you don't need and I can't resist...so the basement is still full of miscellany, but at least there's now different stuff down there waiting for me to either get rid of it or find a use for it. In fact, clamouring for me to do something.
I'm pretty sure most of the stuff I'm peddling doesn't have a lot of hard practical value. If it did, I don't guess I'd be trying to get rid of it, would I? Who gives away sterling silver cutlery at their garage sale? No, it's more like the things you hung onto because you had some half-baked idea you never acted on - that hubcap from a '68 Volvo 142 was going to go on the wall of some kind of never-gonna-happen man-cave as a momento of the terrific crash you walked away from a thousand or so years ago. The electric barbecue briquette starter, the one that looks like a stove element with a handle on the end of it, that you kept in case you ever went back to briquettes rather than propane, the one that's now so old it'll probably set your house on fire if you actually try to use it. Whatever the mental equivalent of that kind of stuff happens to be, that's what I expect to see here....but it's not like I actually know. Did you know that the Bellini, that tasty pink slushy-like drink that usually comes in a cocktail glass with an amusing plastic animal stuck in it, was invented in Venice and named after the shade of pink of a robe in a painting by Bellini? I read it in a novel by Louise Penny. That's a useless yet mildly interesting bit of stuff that's taking up space near the furnace.
Okay, that must be enough to start with. I'm interested to know how this all works, or what it looks like if it actually is working. Worst case, I at least put a bunch of stuff into boxes with labels on them, so they're easier to deal with next time.
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