I have too much stuff. I have so much stuff it’s unbelievable. I have an incredible, ridiculous, overwhelming, positively obscene amount of stuff.

I have knickknacks. I don’t have as many knickknacks here in Germany as I do back in Arizona, but that’s not really saying much. Walking into my room in Arizona used to be like walking into some crazy bazaar from another planet. There were posters and flags and flyers and things hanging from the ceiling and things draped over the corners of bookcases and shelves laden with sparkly things and funny things and pretty bottles and empty cans and old jewelry boxes and tins full of Return of the Jedi cards from when I was 10 years old and old ticket stubs from concerts and there was a zoo’s worth of stuffed animals and a radio station’s worth of CD’s and tapes and there were little mirrors and big mirrors with photographs and bumper stickers tucked into the frames and there were pewter figurines and ceramic figurines and plastic Star Wars figures and a wooden shield I got from a Renaissance fair and two swords I picked up somewhere or another and there were copies of Rolling Stone magazine from 10 years ago and copies of National Geographic magazine from 25 years ago and books and more books and more books…and it was complete chaos. And that was just the stuff that you could see. There were closetfuls and drawerfuls of stuff that you’d only stumble across after rooting around a bit.

As I said, I don’t have quite as many useless items here as I do back in Arizona, but I still probably have more novelty calendars and wacky candle holders and magnets and sets of Legos and random little things than are good for me.

I also have papers. Somewhere or another I have just about every research paper I ever wrote for any class from, say, 1983 to the present. Back in Arizona I have all the paperwork from when I went to Mt. Holyoke. Here in Germany I have all the paperwork from my years at the University of Freiburg. I have folders upon folders filled with handouts and photocopies and reading lists and bibliographies, I have endless notebooks crammed with all the notes I ever took in any class I ever attended here, from Thomas Mann to feminist linguistics, from Jews in the Middle Ages to the history of Northern Ireland, from heraldry and the Crusades to the literature of decadence to the history of the Nazis. I have language workbooks for Old Irish, Modern Irish, French, Italian, and Middle High German.

I have folders full of stuff for work, full of original documents and my translations of documents and documents I’ve corrected and contracts and recommendations and membership information for various organizations. I also have folders with receipts, folders with important documents, folders with scribbled-out recipes, scraps of paper with addresses and phone numbers (but, unfortunately, no names), Post-It notes with cryptic reminders to myself, reams of paper with half-finished song lyrics or lists of the tunes I know on the fiddle, brochures from everywhere, drawers full of old letters and cards, folders with art postcards that I’ve saved, old newspaper clippings, old newspapers, old magazines, new magazines, comics cut out of the New Yorker, empty envelopes, full envelopes, and instructional booklets for electrical appliances that I don’t even own anymore.

I have books. I shouldn’t even talk about the books. The books I have back in the States are too overwhelming to think about. Here in Germany, my dictionaries and cookbooks alone probably weigh about 500 pounds. I just counted 15 dictionaries of various sorts. I have about 31 cookbooks (not including about 10 cookbooks that I’m going to get rid of before I move). Then there are numerous other reference books and travel books, and there are some big “coffee table” sorts of books (Bruegel, Celtic Art, and The Art of Return of the Jedi), and there are too many novels and other types of books for me to want to count right now. Let’s just say that I’ve got a small library going here. And let’s just thank God that there are cheap rates for sending lots of books in the mail.

And I have clothes. Oh my, I have way, way, way too many clothes. I’ve been going through all my clothes over the past few days and weeks, trying to sort out what I want to keep and what I can get rid of. And I’m starting to have the sneaking suspicion that my clothes are actually multiplying in the night, because it seems that no matter how many bags I fill up of clothes to give away, and no matter how many boxes I pack of clothes to send to England, I still have exactly the same amount of clothes sitting on my shelves and strewn across the floor. I’m not kidding here. There’s something weird going on.

The Salvation Army is coming by next week to take away used clothes, and I’ve already filled up sacks for them, BIG sacks and a lot of ‘em. And I’ve already packed two big boxes and one small suitcase of clothes to take to England. And I’ve already filled up a huge sack of clothing just to throw away (old underwear and socks, shirts that are disintegrating, etc.). And yet I sat on my bed this morning and looked at the mountain of textiles still looming over me, and I despaired. I don’t know where all these clothes have come from, and I sure don’t know where on earth they’re all going to go to. I’m starting to feel like a clothes-packing version of Sisyphus: I take one shirt out of a drawer, and another one mysteriously appears in its place. I almost get one shelf cleared off, and I turn around to find that it’s filled with clothes again. Quite frankly, it’s beginning to drive me mad.

In fact, our entire apartment seems to have been infected by some sort of sisyphean virus which has been causing our furniture to multiply as well, thus making our task of moving out an utterly hopeless, endless task. Before our big Sperrmüll last week I wondered if maybe we were getting rid of too much stuff at once. I was kind of worried that the apartment would suddenly seem really cold and empty. I know I have to move out, but while I’m living here, I would like to feel like this is still my home and not some half-empty warehouse or something. So I was fretting a bit about the impending emptiness of my house.

I should not have fretted. There is no emptiness. I distinctly remember dragging out a huge pile of furniture and gadgets and STUFF last week, and yet now I look around my apartment - and it looks exactly the same. It looks more crowded, if that’s possible. I know it’s not possible. Rationally, it is not possible. But irrationally…well, I have come to believe that my stuff has simply taken on a life of its own. My gadgets and goodies woke up, talked amongst themselves, and decided that they have it good with me. My stuff likes me. I’ve gotten attached to my stuff, but I now know that my stuff has gotten even more attached to me than I have to it. My stuff has absolutely no intention of being parted from me. I have become a slave to my continuously multiplying stuff.

Let this be a warning to you all. You think those candleholders and coasters and clothes are really nice right now, but what you don’t realize is that they think you’re really nice too. And a few years down the road when you get tired of them, they’re not going to be tired of you, and you’re going to find that, no matter how many times you seem to throw them away, some strange reincarnation of them will continue to reappear in your closet or your shed or your garage, and you’ll be stuck with them. Forever.

Get out while you still can.