Leaving my home behind!

What a terrible thought. Not my home as in "this" house, however lovely it may be, but my home as in the things and clutter that have followed me through my life, creating year over year, the emotional and visual world where my mind is at ease. I always loved my things in a fierce possessive way that would certainly have raised much scorn in the old wise Buddha. But then I never pretended to be a very ascetical person. It is very little excuse that none of my possessions are worth much in terms of money. They are only worth for the story that goes with them and makes them part of my past, of who I am.

Or does it?

Are they really indeed part of who I am, or are they only projections of my fear to lose myself?

Why should a bookcase, a raku dish, or an old set of silver forks be part of my essence? If I gave them up would I really be diminished? Even those things I painted back to life, after everybody else discarded them as useless junk, am I more "myself" by possessing them, or is it enough to my essence that I made them in the first place?

My friend Claire said something that had me wondering and reflecting for days now... that if you possess something that you cannot let go it becomes a burden, not an asset.
While the theory of it is familiar enough, in an abstract way, its true meaning is haunting and overwelming in this moment when I have to make so many choices: can I keep, somewhere, my 18 century green chairs? And the cups that Robert made for me? And the kilim carpet? And those glasses I found in the abandoned house. Do you remember the abandoned house? Do you remember how its cracked floors seemed to slide down the side of the hill? Do you remember the sunset over its wild garden, the young walnut growing through the roof? Do you remeber?

It is very curious. The memory of the old house is in my mind not in the glasses I found dusty and dirty in the ruined kitchen. I don't need the glasses. I just cherish how they witness the story, how they write a silent paragraph in the novel (romance?) of my home.