My wife and I are moving from Los Angeles to New York, it’s the middle of January, and I never thought I’d find myself so obsessed with the contents of a 16-foot Budget truck.
Our route is long, tough, and snowy. My father has likened it to the Joad family tour except without nearly as much dust, death, or squatting down and squinting our eyes and picking up a handful of dirt and letting it run through our fingers while giving some inspiring speech. “Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there” . . . mmmm, maybe? I’d like to say that I’d be there but apparently I’m more concerned with all the crap that’s in the back of this truck.
I’ve been worried that our things, locked away in this 16 foot gas guzzler, will somehow be stolen. I’m worried that a group of vandals will materially violate me – that they will take bolt cutters to our padlock, steal our things, and top it off by painting something phallic on the side of the truck because they somehow found out that I didn’t spend extra for the zero deductible insurance, and adding insult to injury is what these thieves are all about. These guys are smart. Too smart.
I’ve been so paranoid at times that I’ve found myself checking on the truck every hour or so, discreetly peeking out the window of our Motel 6 room, like some gossipy grandma in a Southern Gothic novel. This obsession is ridiculous.
My paranoia with the things we own began shortly after we loaded the truck in a real-life game of Tetris with three people who would have rather been sleeping. I never knew how much I cared about our second-hand printer, our blender, and our cake stand that has never been used. It’s a cake stand. Who on earth uses a round cake stand more than once or twice a decade? Am I really going to bake a cake – specifically, a round cake – then frost it, display it on a porcelain stand, and later take it off the stand to eat, just so that people can see this round cake, in all its prominence and glory? “Oh my God, look at that round cake! It’s on a stand! Who would have thought to put that round cake on a stand! Look at how useful that is! I wouldn’t have thought much of that ugly little round cake unless it was propped up, as it is, on a pedestal, as if it had something to say! As if it was about to come alive and open its little chocolate lips to compliment me on my haircut! I declare: look at that cake! Standing there! I don’t even want to eat that sexy little cake it’s so beautiful!” No. I didn’t think I cared a lick about that cake stand until I obsessively wrapped it in newspaper and bubble wrap and carefully stacked it among the other boxes of things I tell people I don’t care about. But apparently I do. Care, that is.
My paranoia peaked in Denver. And I think it’s because of Radiohead. The band. You see, when I was in sixth grade Radiohead came through Denver (my home town) on tour and all of their equipment was stolen. They made statements on the radio pleading with the burglars to return their things. They never did. Radiohead left Denver bitter and angry and a little more afraid of the Mile High city.
Our truck, this automotive behemoth, was too big to fit into a parking spot close to where we were staying, and we were forced to park it about a quarter mile away. Out in the open. Where the Mile High bandits could get it. They didn’t, of course, and my suspicion, which likened our fake ficus plants to Johnny Greenwood’s guitar, was unjustified. We left Denver and our “truck o’ stuff” was okay.
I’ve been told that New York City has a way of forcing you to get rid of things. The city’s confined living spaces force you to purge your nonessentials. This is a good thing, if you ask me. Upon arrival in New York, I imagine we’ll come through the Holland Tunnel and be pulled over by a teamster whose job is to inspect all the objects we plan on cramming into our junior one-bedroom apartment. “Okay, California boy, why don’t you open up the back there and we’ll see what ya got.” He’d rifle through our things and carelessly toss a number of items into a muslin sack. “Don’t need dat, don’t need dat, you can get rid of dat, I never even seen one of these before, don’t need dat, and you definitely don’t need this cake stand – although it is very nice – what is that, porcelain? Alright, that’s all. Welcome to New York, sunshine. Get ready to freeze your nips off. Vote Tammany and have a nice day.”
I’ve never been a packrat. In fact, if you were to research the amount of material items owned by the average American, I’d say that I’d be in the lower 30% (and that’s based on absolutely zero empirical data, in case you were wondering). It’s not the “things” that I care about. It’s that somehow this nomadic expedition across the country has intensified my territorial instincts, like I’m some sort of rabid possum. And my “territory” is everything that is tightly packed into this rental truck. In fact, one might even say that these “things” are my only “territory” for seven days on the road. I’m not asking for a pity party or anything, I’m merely trying to express this bizarre feeling of in-between-ness, of not belonging and only having “things” that belong to me. This seems analogous, or at least somehow connected, to the sort of alienation and autonomy to which our culture is falling victim, and it has led me into a type of neuroticism so self-involved that I compare my situation to the band Radiohead (see above).
If we don’t fulfill the inherent need to belong, it would make sense, in all our errant ways, that we fill that need by purchasing things that we can say belong to us. In other words, does a lack of belonging breed materialism which leads to neuroticism which leads to paranoia which leads to believing that this downward spiral of material obsession will continue and Steve Jobs will eventually create a troop of iPod robots so sleek and desirable that they will seduce us into being their slaves?
If “things” turn us inward towards ourselves, then surely there is something that can turn us outward towards others, and from my experience it’s nothing you can get at Best Buy. Even if we don’t truly believe this to be true, we must act like it is true, if we want to be a culture free from the slavery of materialism and iPod robots.
We tend to overlook exactly why we so strongly desire material things. It is easy to complain about our addiction to consumerism, or dismiss it as a cliché not worth examining, but it’s difficult to assess the reasons behind our material obsession. I think that maybe we’re not really obsessed with these “things”. Maybe we’re obsessed with something else. Maybe we’re obsessed with ourselves and being in control of things, and perhaps that is why we sometimes struggle to belong – we’re too concerned with ourselves to be concerned with others. Or maybe I’m completely wrong.
Instead of trying to find the answers to all these difficult questions, I’ll tell you a story from the last leg of our trip that illustrates a point far better than I could write.
Something happened on the final day of our journey that seemed to wrap things up quite nicely, like an ironically violent ending to a David Cronenberg film – the kind that makes your jaw drop.This one came out of left field, and seemed so cruel and surreal that I felt myself levitate a little bit, as if at any moment I would wake up from this nightmare.
We had traveled 3,000 miles over seven days to our destination, and everything had gone just fine. The truck had not broken down. Vandals had not stolen our things. My wife and I were still married. Everything had gone fine. Everything was out of our truck, in our apartment, and I was on my way to return the most expensive and valuable “thing” in my possession: a 16 foot Budget truck. I was traversing the narrow streets of Brooklyn and on the final quarter mile of our 3,028 mile journey, Murphy and his law staged a coup d’état. I was driving down a small one-way road with double-parked cars, which made it even smaller. I was almost to the end of the block when I heard a loud crunch. The back of my truck had crashed into a double-parked car behind me. I was two blocks away from the drop-off station. My soul wilted a little bit, then got up, left my body, and went to vomit on the street corner. I had hit the car’s side mirror and possibly the passenger door. The mirror was dangling there like a lemming that decided to change its mind. But it was too late.
What am I going to do? What on earth am I going to do? A large man of at least 250 pounds got out of the car. He came around to the mirror. I apologized profusely. He said nothing. I stood there cowering, conjuring up any possible way I could get myself out of this mess. And then a miracle happened. I saw that the mirror had been duct taped to the car. He somewhat ineffectively re-taped it back on and stood there for a few seconds in silence, looking at the damage. The large man looked at the “thing” he owned, surely one of his most valued possessions. He looked at his car. He looked at me. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. Don’t worry about it? He got back in his car and I drove off and returned the truck. And it was over. Don’t worry about it. Indeed.