Junk or Not Junk

　年の瀬でございますね。皆様はいかがお過ごしでしょうか。

Today is December 1st, the end of the year, the Holiday season again. How are you guys doing?

　さて、私、今年の暮れでこの住み慣れたブルックリンのアパートから引っ越すことになっているのですが、今は徐々に荷物の整理を始めておりまして、先日も大量の本を処分しました。私、本当に物を捨てることができない性格で、長年、溜めに溜めた物の処理に本当に困っています。叔母にそのことを言うと『ああ、それは家系だから仕様がないよ』と言っておりました。どうやら、叔母も同様の悩みを抱えているようです。元来、日本人は物を大切にする民族なようで、東京がまだ江戸だった頃は古紙、古着から、古下駄、古ほうき、果てには囲炉裏などで使った灰まで回収業者がいたそうです。もちろん、環境保全のためとかではなく、慢性的な物不足でリサイクルをせざるをえなかったというのが実情らしいですけどね。

I am going to move out from the nice and cozy apartment in Brooklyn where I had comfortably lived for almost three years. I have been packing up and throwing stuff out, and I just got rid of piles and piles of books on the other day. I'll be straight; I am the kind of person who can not throw things and who fills the place up with junk. I told my aunt that I was cursed with this problem and she told me that she and her sisters were all cursed with the same problem too. Somebody in the upper reach of our blood line left this unwanted, unneeded, unwelcome bequest onto us. My aunt told me that I just had to live with it. I think, either we like it or not, all Japanese tend to care about physical objects much more than the people from Western cultures. Edo, the old name of Tokyo, was one mammoth recycling society. They literally recycled everything: paper, cloths, sandals, blooms and what not. There were even the dealers collecting ashes to make fertilizers. The people in Edo did not have ecological conscience or any of those forward thinking; Edo was so over-populated because of the political system in that era and the people in there were heavily suffered from the chronic lack of goods, so they were forced to recycle everything, forced to care about things. Well, I and my aunts are the descendants of those people.

　ま、それはさておき、引っ越しまでの時間もないので、なるべく早急に荷物の整理をしてしまわなくてはなりません。目標は今週中に荷物を半分以下にすることです。うーむ、これは物を捨てられない自分にはちょっとハードルが高すぎるかもしれません。ある整理術のサイトには『とりあえず、何も考えずに捨てていってみよう』などという気違いじみた事がいけしゃあしゃあと書いてあります。そんなこと言われてもねぇ。

　コレは人から頂いた大切な品だし、コレは使ってないけど高かったし、コレは大学を出てから１０年以上開いたことがないノートだけど、大切なことがいっぱい書いてあるし……………

　嗚呼、どうしませう……………。

Anyhow, I am running out of time and have to pack up quickly, so I set the target to get rid of half of the stuff in one week. I was reading the articles on Martha-Stewart kind of sites and Queer-eye kind of sites and both of them were saying just throw away EVERYTHING without thinking. To me, that's a pure insanity. Oh boy, this is the hardest mission to accomplish.
　
This is the gift from my friend....
I'm not using this thing but was not cheap....
I haven't even opened up these piled-up notebooks for last 10 years after the college but there are important music theories are written in there.....
Oh well.....

Illustration: プリントわんパグ