In order to arrive in Mexico unencumbered and unbearably light we sold, stored and defenestrated* the majority of our material possessions. (Our spiritual possessions we thought might come in handy) While living in the Suites del Sol, browsing the Sunday markets we aquired Cervantes, you may recall – we plan to go nowhere without his aquiline nose, noble beard and slightly warped and ravaged frame keeping us company. In the subsequent three years we have managed to cram up another house with crap, and by crap I mean elegant home furnishings and one-of-a-kind objets d’art. We even had extra closets built to accomodate our consumer potential. We’ve loaded the guest house to the gills, filled cubbies and bookcases and stocked every shelf. It’s getting all Collyer brothers up in here, so it must be time to exit.

As I told you last Tuesday we’re leaving it all. That’s the plan at this point, five months out. But the sweet sorrow of parting with our stuff just might be too much to take, in addition to saying so long to our beloved Tripod. Every item was hardwon, is treasured, was bought with intention and feels like ours together. In our last New Haven apartment were primary colored remnants of Malcolm’s dorm life, representations of my granny chic phase, and various uncurated piles of papers and sweaters we just couldn’t move past. Most of those things I do not miss or even remember and I wonder if the same will happen after we’ve extracted ourselves from the Azcue sofa set, hand painted rustic chairs that bite the backs of your thighs, the Christmas Vihuela and overpriced Liverpool storage baskets.

Every iteration has its own set of wares and context, as always, is critical. This period, which will be known to Future Malcolm and Future Jillian as alternately “Those lazy, crazy Mexico days” and ” The Yucatecan Renaissance and Last Times of Our Youth”, is populated with art and appliances we’ve found on the street, on the beach, given and received as gifts, and made with our own busy hands. We’re bringing the books that we stubbornly muled down over the course of seven or eight trips to the States. But other than that, we’re traveling light. Really, what do we need?

America is brimming with goods and I intend to gather everything Anthropologie, Restoration Hardware, and Trader Joe’s has to offer and jump into the bobo booty with glee and abandon, as a child into a pile of raked autumn leaves. It was cathartic to purge our old and used belongings. We felt free and Zen ascetic. I believe this process is cyclical and we will one day in the future feel compelled to cast off our treasures and run away to some fresh paradise. But at this point in our adventure we yearn to be conspicuous consumers.  It is time to furnish our next incarnation with pleasing and useful things and to do so properly we must also leave some well-loved possessions behind.

* This is a lie

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