A submission from Manuel

Recently I discarded boxes (six shoe boxes) full of old phone bills, credit card statements, bank statements, invoices, etc. that I have been piling up for years. It was a big project as I had to select what was important and what wasn’t, and I don’t own a shredder. I decided not to buy one, so, my wrists hurt all day after I finished. I am not sure why I kept all these records, especially now that I can access them on line. I might switch to automatic e-payment and start paying my bills on line – that would avoid cluttering. I also got rid of clothing, books, CD’s, magazines, and shoes – some of them almost never used, or read, or only played a couple of times. I am not sure why it was so liberating to get rid of these things. Furthermore, I am not sure why I had these things in the first place, what I was thinking at the time I bought them. Besides the obvious reflection that we live in an extremely consumerist society, that constantly bombard us to buy more, I thought about the nature of desire itself, how it works, how satisfying it is to get new things and how satisfying it is to get rid of them. Now I am thinking not only about the desire for things or concrete objects, but for the immaterial things that we desire as well…but that seems a little bit out of the scope of the project, and I have not much to say about that, yet.

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