The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away

Perhaps it was due to my mood, depressed beyond belief due to the Concepts of Calculus for Middle School Teachers class I am trying to survive which is sucking all the life out of me, or perhaps it was just the content of the story. Whichever, I found The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away utterly depressing. He says his life has been reduced to garbage. Everywhere he has neatly stacked and cataloged all the scraps and papers from his life. It is so odd that he considers his life garbage yet treats these artifacts with such care. Does he really believe what he says? If so, why does he make the effort to preserve every piece in this way? His writing is eloquent, not what I would expect from a crackpot or deeply disturbed person, the sort one might associate with this compulsion. His observations about the building across the street probably parallel his thoughts about himself...construction or destruction? I hate to part with certain papers or bits and pieces from my life. I can understand relating them to preserving my existence. I felt a twinge yesterday as I recycled a card from a neighbor that had on it a photograph she had taken of a street in Europe. It was pretty and it had a nice note in it. Somehow, the thought that the paper would be recycled into something new made it just a bit easier to part with. Perhaps the Plumber did not have a recycling program where he lived. Would he have been able to part with even a few scraps if he had? Sometimes I wonder what people would think if I were to drop dead and they went through my things. I do save more than I ought, photos, books, my kid's grammar school drawings, art supplies for projects I may or may not ever get to or back to, even the dress I wore to my high school graduation. Perhaps I should start cataloging stuff.