The young man smiled as he fingered the out-of-tune strings of the small guitar. “Ten bucks?” he asked. His look was hungry, I could see the dreams had already begun to take shape. He walked away from our garage sale with an eagerness in his step.
Suddenly I felt a burst of grief. I nearly ran after him. I was flooded with regret. I had just sold my guitar, my guitar!
My parents had bought it for me when I was 13. I remember the trip to the music store, the wonderful variety of styles of guitars hanging on the walls. I remember picking this guitar out, the beauty of the polished wood, the warm inviting tone when I strummed.
I had been trying to teach myself to play on a guitar handed down from one of my sister’s boyfriends. The rock and roll style guitar was big and bulky to handle. Both my parents and I were convinced of my commitment so we went in search of my very own guitar, and a teacher. The first teacher was a bit odd but she did teach me some classical pieces. I had an embarrassing first recital but that didn’t keep me from plucking away, especially when we found a more copacetic teacher. That connection was quickly lost when we moved, and somehow we never got around to finding another teacher, as the family moves continued for a while.
But my parents continued to encourage me and I kept singing and teaching myself to play: Peter,Paul and Mary, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles. The truth is I never got very good because I never practiced enough, though it was enough a part of my life that I took the guitar to college to keep playing. I had visions of friends gathering around, everyone playing music together. I met far better musicians at college. I felt too novice, and lost interest as my new life of independence swirled around me, so many new experiences to be had. I remember deciding I wasn’t talented enough, and anyway didn’t want to work at playing guitar anymore. I thought maybe I would pick up music- making again down the road some time.
So the guitar, always slightly out of tune or with a broken string, moved with me from Houston to six different homes in Austin . It used to be I could move myself in my car, but the last move, from Austin up to Fort Worth, I actually needed a moving van to haul my stuff. I remember recognizing this as a turning point and thinking it had something to do with adulthood. I had enough stuff now to have a household!
Some years later we had a garage sale and I was determined to be ruthless. I hadn’t touched the guitar in years.I pulled it out and sold it. And then couldn’t get over it, despite my pleasure that it had clearly found a good home with someone who delighted in it.
Selling my guitar was an admission that I was never going to be good at playing and that I had never learned to make music like I dreamed I would. Now, life was moving on without it. I felt guilty remembering how my parents tried to support me in the dream, like I had let them down. In fact, they were pretty pleased about my getting a Ph.D. and hadn’t really seemed that concerned that I stopped playing guitar, but still----did they hold it against me?
Such is the complicated tangle of our relationship with stuff. Full of memories and relationships, emotions and dreams, our stuff seems to become part of us in the most unexpected, sometimes peculiar ways. We are given things, inherit family heirlooms, sacrifice to make purchases, buy what is trendy. Somehow years later our closets hold our past, speaking reproach as we pile up things we use daily on tables and counters because the closet or garage is full of what was once valued by us or someone we love.
Years ago reading Nancy Azara’s book, Spirit Taking Form, I took away the notion that material things are imbued by their makers with a spirit in some way, connected with a certain aesthetic, function or purpose. Things need to be released to live out their purpose in the world, that they have been created for. To hold onto them and not use them or even ever see them can not only block or weigh us down in certain ways, but also blocks the natural outcome of the making, of the flow of creation between human and object. From Azara and other writers comes the sense that the things we own should be for their beauty or their function, or both, and that we should neither acquire nor keep anything that doesn’t serve us in this way.I remember my guitar, I don’t need to see its dusty case in the closet to remember all those wonderful experiences and dreams. And I surely don’t need the reproach it triggered in me regarding my own lack of persistence. But I still wish I had taken a picture of it….
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FYI Tonya Paulette of Stellar Spaces, www.stellarspaces.com, guest on March 10, 2010
With a passion for assisting others in transforming their home into a haven, Tonya, a professional organizer and interior decorator, came to her current work through the field of psychology. She previously worked for 5 years in community mental health services, followed by 10 years as a Licensed Specialist in School Psychology in Texas public schools. Upon moving to Florida with her family in 2007, Tonya founded Stellar Spaces which offers Residential Organizing, Interior Decorating/ReDesign and Home Staging services.
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