Puttin' Stuff to Rights

"hey man/ this is not your perogative/ i gotta have me in my

pocket/ to get round like a good woman shd/ & make the poem
in the pot or the chicken in the dance/ what i got to do/
i gotta get my stuff to do it to/
why dont ya find yr own things/ & leave this package

of me for my destiny/ ..."

Those are a few of the rockin' lines from "somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff" by Ntozake Shange, part of For Colored Girls who have considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf. I loved that play when I first saw it in the seventies, and I loved it again when it came around in a film version last year.

I've been thinking of this particular poem this weekend, because I've spent much of my time packing up my daughter's Stuff. That's "Stuff," with a capitol S. You know what stuff is: It's whatever you can dismiss with a wave of your hand, it's undefined by definition. "What are we having for dinner tonight, Mom?" If the answer is "Just stuff," it may be time to wrangle an invitation to a friend's table. "What's bothering you, sweetie?" "Oh, just stuff." Again, it may be time to go out. You are probably included in that "stuff," but you're not going to get to hear that for a while yet. "What'd the professor talk about today?" "You know. Same stuff." Your fellow student didn't listen; again, turn elsewhere.

But Stuff is essential, and it's this Stuff Ntozake Shange wrote about in this poem; it's a woman's essence. This weekend, I've been trying to discriminate between my daughter's stuff and her Stuff. We Americans have a mind-boggling amount of stuff. Our touted right to the "pursuit of happiness" has propitiously been equated with the right to buy anything we want. In our society, even college students have so much in the way of material possessions they require moving trucks to change apartments every semester. It's common for many middle class families to hold yard sales every summer, an annual ritual whereby they make a little money getting a sunburn sitting in their driveway all day while strangers pick through clothing they outgrew and George Foreman mini-grills that they used twice and then stored on the unreachable shelf at the top of every built in cupboard. We have so much. We have too much. I'm preparing to ship my daughter's Stuff to Arizona for her. I'm thinking now it might all be just stuff, and the only Stuff is what she's already toting right inside that big brilliant brain of hers. Well, and maybe her cello gets to go, too, maybe it's Stuff.

I have a family from Hong Kong staying with me this summer. After they'd been here a couple of days, when the 10-year-old son felt comfortable enough with me to speak freely, he commented sagely, "I see that when you have such a big house, it isn't kept as clean." I was startled, then I laughed. He was right. My house is so old it sometimes seems like it's no longer made of stone and shingles but almost entirely made of dust, which falls at a faster rate than anyone could ever clean. But what Chihang meant was somewhat different. He meant that when someone has so much space, they fill it with lots of possessions. Yep. Stuff.

Chihang's family, which is doing very well by anyone's financial terms, lives in an apartment that is under 1,000 square feet in Hong Kong, on the 43rd floor of a building built over five underground levels containing a shopping mall, the parking spaces, and a state of the art fitness center. Everything has a definite place in their apartment, and at day's end, everything is stored in its place. In my house, things can be left out. My easel with its current wet oil painting is out in the dining room. My good old road bike leans against a bookcase in the living room. There is room. I noted to Chihang the other day that he was making a speedy and thorough adjustment to living in America's vaster spaces. His books and his flipflops and his jacket were strewn about the living room. We grinned at each other, conspirators in cultural exchange.

I wonder how this translates into the vastness of the American landscape. Are we less respectful of our land because we have so much? We came from a population of explorers and from ranchers and farmers who kept moving further West when they needed more land, better land. Do we allow drilling in the Alaskan wilderness because there's just so much of it we can't imagine it ever being depleted? Do we allow strip mines in Appalachia because, heck, who'd want to live there anyway? Do we hardly think twice about abandoning rockets and satellites in space because they'll probably never be seen until they fall at random, probably "just" into some ocean?

We need to remember that what really matters, as Ntozake knew, is our Stuff. Don't let anyone take your Stuff. Strut your Stuff. Sell the rest.