on objects
Objects hold memories.
I consider myself a minimalist, fully converted by Marie Kondo. In the past, I took this as getting rid of ‘stuff’ for an aesthetic sense, or almost an ascetic mentality, where if you just got rid of enough stuff, life would feel lighter. Of course we never account for the mental dimension of ’letting go’ - and I didn’t realise this until much later.
As a consequence, I got rid of a few things I partly regret now.
- I used to write all my book notes, quotes, observations on small index cards. One day, I decided to just throw out around 500 of them (I was 20) and I deeply regret it.
- I journalled and wrote a lot of short stories - again I ended up throwing out of the notebooks, feeling like I didn’t want to be burdened by past expectation
- My Fujifilm XT-4 : a beautiful camera that I documented my ‘American roadtrip’ on and much more
I suspect 20 year old me, was looking for escape- a clean slate. The quality of creations (short stories etc) didn’t meet my expectation. A perfectionist attitude. I would do the same for certain friendships, and although that is needed to some level (you don’t want toxic people), you also can’t find perfection here.
What you do gain in ‘getting rid of stuff’, is that you gain a deep appreciation of what you do actually value. The fact that you miss certain things and not others, tells you what you value.
Although I don’t regret getting rid of much, those few items mean a lot. A camera is just a tool in one view, but in another, its a store of memory, a memento.
Walking the Camino
I’m going to be walking the Camino de Santiago (Frances route) and I was thinking about what ’things to take’. Part of a pilgrimage is about travelling lightly, and as Kevin Kelley says:
Your enjoyment of travel is inversely proportional to the size of your luggage
What do I take?
- Ricoh GRiii (main camera) - light, compact
- iPhone 13 Pro (video and dictating notes)
I keep feeling like I need to take more to document it, but I suspect that I’ll regret lugging around a large mirrorless camera. I want to take photos of the scenery and also fellow walkers. I think the Ricoh should be enough.
Why do I want to walk the camino exactly?
- This is a similar question to why I meditate or sit in silence. In one sentence : because the body holds truths that are beyond language. When I walk, I’m more in my body i.e. in reality. Not lost in mental time travel. This is a sacred space.
- I’m turning 30. I think it is important to mark transition periods - it’s why we have rituals, weddings, funerals.
- I want to be deeply bored. Craig mod talks about this : https://www.ted.com/pages/how-to-take-a-long-walk-craig-mod. Only by being ‘bored’ in the deepest sense, do you start to truly pay attention. I want to create something from this. Write, photograph, film. I want a tangible ‘memory’ or object that I can remember this period of life.
- To reflect on how I want my life for the next decade to look like. By 30, one should really have a concrete idea of what is important to them, what lifestyle they aspire towards. I think I have a decent grasp of this, but I’m ‘behind in some ways’. Spending a decade in school, then working a gruelling job, I naturally don’t have a good social network. I spend most of my time alone, and I don’t think I can name a close friend I can call in a time of crisis (maybe 1 friend, and family). So part of turning 30 is to work on this. I’m coming to realise as an adult, most of this it is just about scheduling it on the calendar…
- In preparation for when I eventually walk the Kumano Kodo. Maybe this will be the start of a tradition.
Rules for the Camino
- No social media/news/phone/internet
- Write in the morning before walking and after the walk.
- Take a few books that you deeply want to absorb (David Deutsch )
- Take a portrait every day (of another fellow walker)
Links
The quality of silence and “in the headness” of walking alone is, I find, absolutely fundamental to being able to “see” the world, work through ideas, photograph, and engage. Walking becomes a proxy for writing, and that writing happens for me only when walking alone. A strange quirk but one I’ve learned to work with.
Second, I’m fundamentally an introvert. Meeting new people is the quickest way to get me to curl up in a ball. It takes everything out of me. Paradoxically, like a lot of other introverts out there, I also recognize how much I get from the right interactions, the right meetings, the right retreats. And how everything can fall apart without that pulse of humanity nearby. But I have to be strategic and cautious. Recovery time is sometimes non-trivial. So the idea of adding an unknown variable in the form of a human being to a walk with all attendant other work at stake is … terrifying!
Other thoughts
I want to write more regardless of the quality. In this intention, I’m moving more to treating this website more as a digital scrapbook of half assembled ideas. It’s only by writing about things, that I truly sit down and know what I think.
I live in a world of words and literature means so much to me. But its less about creating good readable ‘stuff’ and more about thinking through topics myself. A few people do read this blog, and I’ve had people reach out to me, saying that they enjoyed a particular post - but in general, I feel like I’m writing to no-one but me.
I’ve been enjoying sitting in cafe’s. I can literally spend 3-4+ hours just sitting there reading and writing. Especially on weekends. I end up with a long list of links/reading material, so I’ve decided I’m going to use Substack to collate that into a weekly newsletter.