Clump #38:  Clean up remnants of killer-beach-bag pile.

Day Seven of my 30-day, 30-clump, 30-post challenge.  One solid week! Will I be able to keep up the pace?  Tune In!  

The day before yesterday I powered through a beach bag which was straining with the weight of long-neglected papers. But as everyone knows (please let there be other people who do this), the real work begins when it’s time to approach the hot molten lava of the inner pile that can’t be thrown away or recycled.

Decisions must be made.  Some are pretty easy, like putting another Billboard magazine in my son’s room.  I hope Carly Rae Jepsen can coexist with Fiona Apple.

One little paper (top left in photo below) had the address scribbled on it of a friend who had loaned me the book A Dog’s Purpose, by Bruce Cameron, long, too long ago.  It was a funny and touching story told from a dog’s perspective.

I’d bought the sequel when it came out, A Dog’s Journey, intending to send it right out with the loaned book as a thank you/sorry it’s coming back so late gift.  By now, the sequel must be in paperback, and she might already have it.  As if playing a slot machine that never paid out, I’d had various book and address combinations, but not all three at once.  Until today.

I’m still dizzy from the vertigo of searching for those books in the monumental clumps I have yet to scale.  It was a good reminder of the wisdom in tackling only one clump a day.  Don’t look — don’t look ahead — just concentrate on this one step.

I was close to giving up the search for the loaned book, and buying the friend a new copy, when I finally spotted it.  Good Dog!  I went right to the post office and mailed them out, with a note containing my apology. I felt an immediate lightness.

Another Cryptoquote answer made its way into the little book I keep for ideas, notes and inspiration.  This is one clutter-bug habit I will never apologize for.  I love flipping through and getting a jolt of inspiration from the little slivers of paper.

Now the Kurt Vonnegut quote I mentioned in a previous post:  (“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow.  So do it.”) — by chance — is next to a quote from Vincent Van Gogh: “If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”

Two different men with a similar philosophy.

Let me pause now and let it sink in.  I find the idea deeply inspiring that one of the greatest artists of all time had any knowledge of a voice saying “you cannot paint.”  The Vincent Van Gogh self portrait in the Art Institute of Chicago is one of my favorites.  I couldn’t locate my own photo (it was that kind of day), so here it is from google images:

It glows.  Ahh, how I love art.  I do feel my soul expanding.