Paris Letters (4 page)

Returning to my apartment after donating my clothes made me feel so great that the last thing I wanted to do was to go out and buy more clothes. In fact, it made me never want to buy anything ever again.

Did I make $100 a day cleaning out my closets? No. But it convinced me to avoid the mall, thereby keeping money in my pocket. And after feeling the weight of bag after bag heading out of my apartment, I wondered why I had bought all these clothes. Did I buy them to bring me happiness? Did they? Not really, no. In fact, they got in the way of what I was looking for.

Immediately after the great decluttering of my closets, I discovered a side effect from all that closet space. There is a certain freedom in not having so many choices. I knew I had less choice of what to wear, yet it didn’t feel that way. Being able to keep my short inventory in my head made me feel like I had more choices. Plus, there was no more lost time in scrounging. And that kept me satisfied enough to not spend what little free time I had buying clothes I didn’t need that didn’t make me or my wallet happy.

I found this new happiness curious, so I did a little research. Unclutterer.com defines an unclutterer as “someone who decides to get rid of the distractions (clutter) that get in the way of a remarkable life.” Was that happening to me? Was I getting rid of the things that got in the way of a remarkable life? Could I actually have a remarkable life underneath all this stuff? And could my remarkable life have started just by folding my undies into pretty little envelope shapes?

I felt a redefinition of self brewing. Instead of accepting Akemi’s definition of me—“You’re a copywriter. That’s who you are”—I tried on other definitions of myself. I am an unclutterer. Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. I am a minimalist. Sort of. I’m minimalish.

In researching minimalists, I discovered a whole movement of people who were living simple, reasonably stress-free lives with very little in their closets. How did I miss this entire movement?

I must have been out shopping.

4

Take Care of Unfinished Business

By the end of March 2010, three months after beginning my year of journaling dangerously, my closets were sparse and gorgeous. Most nights, I’d arrive home after a long day of work at the advertising agency and be met with a mailbox full of junk, some of which I had created during my day job. I’d briefly check to see which headline the client had chosen before I tossed the pile in the recycling bin.

I’d open the door, drop my bags, and then it was time. Time to open my closet or a cupboard or stare at a shelf and set my alarm for twenty minutes. I learned that I could get a lot accomplished inside twenty minutes. After the alarm went off, I could stop whatever I was doing and move on with my evening. But having that twenty minutes often got me warmed up enough to keep going until I had a bag full of clothes, knickknacks, and books for the donation box at the thrift store and new space in my closet that made me gleeful. One step closer, I thought. One step closer to one suitcase.

By April, I consulted the invisible Mr. Miyagi once again in my car on the commute to work. “What else could I do to make or save $100 a day?”

Take care of unfinished business.

I sat with this for a minute. What unfinished business? I had plenty. Where would I start? Once at work, I pulled out my journal and began writing a long list of unfinished business. Once complete, I reviewed the list and decided to start with my taxes. I had to file taxes by the end of April anyway. So if I didn’t know what to do to make more money, what I did know was that I’d have to get my finances in order. I filed my taxes and got my grocery bag full of receipts down to one envelope of necessary, organized tax information. And I got a refund. Cha-ching!

Next was getting the rest of my finances together. I had a handful of credit cards, each with a small balance. Sometimes I didn’t pay these on time and was dinged with a late payment fee. Once I paid off the small balances, I canceled the cards. I was left with the one card with the bigger balance. I was only going to take one card with me on the road anyway. Why did I have so many? I went on to close a few bank accounts. Again, why did I have a little bit of money here, there, and everywhere? And then came the coins. I found spare change in my pockets and purses, car and desk. I collected all this found money and used it to buy coffee. I was amazed at how many coffees I could buy by collecting my spare change. I also collected all my coffee cards. All those cards that promised the tenth drink free. Most of my cards had a few stamps. I compiled them all and continued my free coffee for weeks.

One morning, I woke up unable to move my neck, shoulders, or upper back. The x-ray revealed a very straight neck. I thought straight was good. Nice posture. What’s the problem?

“There is supposed to be a curve,” said the doctor. “Were you in a car accident recently?”

I tried to shake my head no and realized I couldn’t.

“Do you work a lot on the computer?” I tried to nod. I couldn’t.

“I think you got whiplash from extended computer use.”

“Is that a thing?”

She nodded. “Happens all the time.” She wrote out a prescription for physical therapy. I asked her for extra days off from work. She laughed. “No, but here are some muscle relaxers that will make work feel like a circus.”

Kate was my new physical therapist. She worked through the knots in my back, legs, and feet. It all helped, but when she started squeezing and scrunching the muscles around my shoulder sockets, the knots began to release their stronghold. Each week I returned for my rubdown, ready to wince through my wringing. Slowly the golf balls in my back disappeared, and I was able to move my neck again and return to my journal each day to cross off items on my list of unfinished business.

All this time with Kate made me think that I should take care of all medical appointments. When was the last time I got my eyes checked and ears cleaned? Isn’t it time for my annual girly parts test?

With muscle relaxers in my bloodstream, Kate on speed dial, and a clean bill of health from a handful of medical professionals, I was feeling good about life. And my day job still didn’t bother me as much because I refocused my energy on my dwindling list of unfinished business.

By night, I moved on from my closets to delve into my cupboards. I tossed dried-up nail polishes and hairbrushes. I only used one hairbrush. Why did I have six? I used up the rest of my teeth whitening gel. I gave up on and tossed the recipes I’d clipped for dishes I never made. I tossed the free CD of weird music I never listen to from that yoga class I stopped going to. The old yoga mat, the deflated yoga ball, the broken yoga straps, the expired yoga membership…tossed. Half-filled journals of half-baked ideas, the stack of phone books from the last five years, broken flowerpots that I kept with thoughts of making something crafty from them, the broken frames I meant to fix…tossed. Makeup samples, swag from film industry party gift bags, sunglasses with scratches, a home phone even though I didn’t have a land line anymore, chargers for cell phones I didn’t have anymore, computer boxes for computers I didn’t have either, instruction manuals for electronics that I didn’t even remember having, the wrong-sized vacuum bags I never returned, checkbooks for accounts I no longer had…tossed. And loyalty cards that promised savings on everything I bought. Tossed. I’d save more by not buying.

And through all this, I collected a little stack of half-finished letters to my friend Áine. She and I had been writing letters back and forth for years. We haven’t lived in the same city since we met in school. When I lived in Toronto, she lived in Japan. When she lived in Toronto, I lived in Los Angeles. When I lived in Toronto again, she lived in Ireland. And now that I was living in Los Angeles again, she was back in Toronto. She is an Irish redhead in temperament and sometimes in looks, yet she’s as sweet as sugar. On our first vacation together, when I was meeting her in Japan, we realized that we were such compatible travel companions that we decided to see as much of the world as we could together. She’s a master at languages, and I’m good with the map. I’ll get us to a certain restaurant, and she’ll order for us. And if some fool is trying to pull one over on us, she will whip out crazy language skills and tell him what he can do with himself and the horse he rode in on. She’s amazing. We usually travel to places where the mountains meet the sea.

I sat next to my garbage bag and reread the unfinished letters to her. They were all on French-themed stationery: Eiffel Tower, cafés, poodles, wine bottles, winding streets,
etc.
And all my thank-you cards were emblazed with Merci. Why hadn’t I realized this before? Perhaps Paris would be a nice place to visit once I made the dough to quit my job.

I mailed off the stack of letters with a note explaining that they were unfinished but I knew Áine would understand.

At the end of May, I hopped on a plane for my pre-approved vacation in Rome. Áine was flying in from Toronto. We met at the airport and skipped through the eternal city, picking up boys and gelatos on every street corner. Two boys held our interest most of all: Sandro and Marco. Dark brown eyes, heads of curly black hair, and smiles for days, they looked like living, breathing Bernini statues. For a week, we four had tossed around colorful expressions in Italian and English and added plenty of spicy innuendo. Though Romans are great with coffee, architecture, and ruling the world for centuries, the thing that they are best at is flirting. Flirting is as ingrained in the culture as gelato and the Catholic Church. It’s just how they roll. Men live for the back-and-forth witty chitchat. And yes, they live for suggestive hints about what we could do here and there. It doesn’t have to be real. It just has to be fun. They are all about a good laugh. Nothing is forever. Everything is fleeting. It’s all about amusement in the moment.

It was then Áine and I discovered our hidden talents for flirting. A dormant skill awakened, and we were able to keep up with the locals. Waiters became our best friends. They seemed so delighted to see us, as if we’d been there before. They kissed our hands when we arrived, and they kissed our cheeks when we left. I even had one old waiter sneak a kiss on my neck by the bathroom. One waiter asked Áine to meet him at the disco that night…and she thinks he also asked for a threesome, but something got lost in translation. She didn’t take him up on either invitation.

In Rome, we were adored. And we adored being adored.

In the end, nothing ever came of any of our flirting with Sandro and Marco, except for the volleying of witty repartee and innuendo. Every word spoken was a delicious suggestive morsel. Maybe it was the water. Maybe it was the brown-eyed, beautiful men. Maybe it was the wine and our overactive imaginations. Whatever it was, this week in Italy revved me up to save up, quit my job, and travel.

We spent a day at the Vatican to get saintly again after our devilish fun in Rome. When I was a kid, my class was required to go to confession twice a year, that oh-so-pleasant task of confessing all your sins to a priest who will, after he wakes up, forgive you and instruct you to recite five Hail Marys and five Our Fathers, which will wipe the slate clean and you can resume fighting with your sisters, swearing, and lying to your parents about how much ice cream you ate. My class would traipse over to the church next to the school like a line of prisoners about to be executed—not for our sins, but because we didn’t know what to say. What sins do you really have when you’re eight years old? The priest would sit in the confessional, and I’d recite my list of bad things.

“Bless me Father for I have sinned. It’s been six months since my last confession. Since then I’ve sworn, fought with my sisters, disobeyed my mother and…ummmm…uhhh…and forgive me for anythingelseIcan’tremember.”

The priest, in his kindness, would absolve me of all my dreadful sins and send me off with my prayers to recite in the pew. I never really bought into all this confession business, but, like most of my Catholic upbringing, I didn’t really think too long and hard about it.

When I was at the Vatican with Áine, she saw something in the distance and grabbed my arm. “Hey, the English booth is open in the Confessional. Wanna go?” I nodded, figuring a confession at the Vatican would count for more because it was the Vatican. I didn’t have too many sins to confess. I didn’t want to confess sins I knew I’d happily commit again. That was hardly asking forgiveness. But off we went anyway.

So I sat there in the confessional with the priest and began, “Bless me Father for I have sinned. It’s been eight years since my last confession… Since then, I’ve…” Silence. “The truth is, Father, that I’m just really mad at God.” I was about to begin my usual rant about how my life wasn’t where I wished it was and why was God doing this to me and why couldn’t I get what I wanted and what was I doing wrong and why was this happening to me and why on earth would God do this to me??? But instead of all that, I took a deep breath and said, “I just wish I had a really good boyfriend. I’ve looked for a long time, and I’m starting to think he doesn’t exist.”

The priest went on to tell me all the things I didn’t know I needed to hear. He said there was a plan, and if I had what I thought I wanted, there could be problems. He said to trust, to assume my current circumstances were for my benefit. He said to be grateful both for what I had and what I didn’t have. If I didn’t have it, I didn’t need it.

Now this sounded good in theory. But I wasn’t sure. This priest was insightful. He got right to the heart of it. This insight surprised me. I used to think that only religions of the East had insights. Really, as silly as that sounds, I always thought of the Catholic Church as high on doctrine and rules and low on insight and heart. But this priest at the Vatican? He had skills. He continued, “And please, please, please forgive yourself for buying into the belief that something is wrong with you. You are not defective. You didn’t do anything wrong. You don’t have to do anything more. God made you perfect.” He paused for dramatic effect. “And he kept you that way.”