Labyrinthine Lessons

I’m having a problem shaking the memory of a scene from a movie that I watched several months ago now.

It’s not that is was a vivid scene, and it certainly isn’t a profound movie – quite honestly, I’m embarrassed to admit I watched it at all – but since the scene keeps bugging me, I thought I ought to blog about it in an attempt to rid myself of it’s reoccurrence in my memory.

I know the replaying of the scene is triggered by a variety of things; seeing a homeless person pushing a full-to-overflowing shopping cart (all their worldly possessions, no doubt) or seeing my backpack clad self reflected in an office window as I walked home from work one day; even the act of writing up my very first, Last Will recently; but whatever the reason I’ve been thinking a lot about the amount of stuff I have amassed during my ‘X’ number of years on the planet.

I have a lot of stuff. Too much stuff really. Every so often I think I ought to divest myself of some of my less-significant possessions. A thought that is often followed by a large sense of dread and feeling overwhelmed. An unpleasant undertaking that; if I can quote my friend C’s reaction when faced with unpleasant tasks he needs to tackle: “... is akin to being flayed alive as far as I'm concerned. gAck!, I'd rather smell my own intestines burning before having to do that... but I expound in possibly a little too much detail” Graphic but fitting, C.

Ironically, it was in one of these desperate and somewhat futile attempts to divest myself of some clutter that I re-watched “Labyrinth” for the first time in probably 15 years. About six months ago I decided it was time to divest myself of my VCR tapes but before jettisoning them, I decided to go through them and digitize what I’d like to keep. The majority of the tapes were what could be referred to as mixed tapes, random collections of shows and music videos and various other videographic-flotsam. But in amongst the myriad of mixed tapes were a few movies that I liked when I was younger, one of which was “Labyrinth”.

“Labyrinth”, for those of you not familiar with it, is a coming of age movie in which a teenage girl named Sarah has to come to terms with the passing of her childhood and divest herself of some of childhood ways.

The scariest part (other than seeing David Bowie in cotton leggings) was the part of the movie with the Junk Lady. After being drugged, Sarah falls into what appears to be her room at home, at which point she starts re-connecting with her toys and stuffed animals, gathering them up in her arms at which point the helpful Junk Lady (a rather old woman hunched over and laden with all matter of junk piled on her back) comes a long and starts piling all Sarah’s old toys onto her back, telling her how wonderful all her things are and how much she needs them; weighing her down with all her childhood clutter. Until Sarah realizes she doesn’t need all this junk and sheds herself of the burden.

Now, I’m not holding on to my childhood – my arms far too short to reach back that far – but I do tend to keep things for “sentimental reasons” and because “someday they might come in handy” or better yet “someday they might be a collectors item.” I can’t tell you how many things I have kept around my small apartment that fall into this last category.

The problem is, my place is cluttered and it’s beginning to weigh me down. It’s becoming mentally overwhelming. I need to divest myself of some of these things, to rid myself of the “under-useful” and jettison the “potential collectibles” that I just no longer want.

I need to realise how much of this is just junk; just stuff that I have kept over the years that no longer hold any real significance; just dust collectors that need to be purged from the premises.

So this weekend I plan on starting the purge – it will be a long and painful process, I know, but one that needs to be undertaken and one that is a long time overdue.

I will have to be strong and ruthless and see these things for what they really are – just junk, weighing me down, burdening me – slowly turning me into a Junk Lady.