Gum wrappers and old receipts.
This time, I'm really throwing it all away. My basement, my attic, and every room in between. It's literal and it's figurative but mostly it's just real. How did everything get so damn heavy? My house is heavy--I'm donating my stuff to charity. My body, heavy--I'm losing weight. Even my hair felt heavy, so I chopped it off. It's like cleaning out a pocket or a purse but on such a grand scale. Everything I remove vacates a space where something new can enter, inhabit and influence.

What does it look like to start from scratch? I'm not tossing the sofa to the wolves or putting my pets out by the roadside with a "Homeless, please help" sign. I'm not selling my house (especially in this market). I don't need new dishes to get a new lease on life, and I'm sure I'll still indulge in karaoke from time to time at the Candlelight Lounge. But I need to shed skins: clothes that don't fit, habits that hurt rather than help, so-called friends who feed off my energy without giving back, nostalgia for its own sake. Vampires, every one.

If I say I have psychic cobwebs, does that make me a hippie? If I still shave my armpits and legs, does shit even out?

I'm ready for the next challenger or champion. I believe that both will look an awful lot like me.