mills:

Things Fall Apart / Things Pile Up: Junkyard House (Photophobia / Via / Larger).

Among the various low-grade forms of insanity that constitute normative behavior  -those tics and quirks that are common enough to statistically override their seeming aberration- we can distinguish whole worlds of unclassified dysfunction. One area of lunacy that resonates: the panic one feels over the accrual of things, the anxiety one experiences when one realizes how much stuff one has, how it hems one in, how it can never be organized, cleaned, sorted, arranged, used, perfected, or discarded.

Maybe there ought to be a name for the dementia of object-anxiety; maybe there is. In the absence of a name, a disorder is just a description, and no matter how bizarre it is it disappears into the private sphere of individual idiosyncrasy: one retreats into one’s junkyard house and nervously wonders what to do with all these wrecked machines.

Mills always writes with abnormal precision; I really am captivated by his insight into everyday things. 

In this case, it made me think of lighter fair than he usually gets into, but considering the above photo, I think it’s relevant.

My roommates and I spent last night packing up the remainder of our freshman college experience, leaving just the knick-nacks. How did we get this stuff? I came here on the five hour trip from home, with maybe a suitcase, backpack, and a  plastic container of sweaters. I’m vacating the dorm with twice as much. And do you know what? I count all of it as necessary.

Reasoning behind this? I’m obsessive compulsive. Not a hoarder. What I am is afraid that my Pure-O will make me hoard things. So I pare down. I make sure that I have to keep things in order to pack them. I have one bag of things to scrap book. Just papers. Flyers, paint chips, tickets, playbills that decorated the bulletin board for the past 9 months.

We’ve been in college for the time that it takes to incubate a baby. Giving birth to a yearfull of memories is hard.

I’ve never liked school. This is new for me. I will actually be sorry to see some people go. Rather—I will be sorry to see anybody go. Myself, selfishly included. Roommate #1 and #2 are leaving three hours after me. For the first time all year, I will leave someone else to pace around aimlessly.

In that respect, I’m not regrettful. I want to go home, even though I know, in absolute certainty, that in two weeks, maybe less, I will be begging to escape.

But for right now, I miss my dog. I miss my neurotic mother with her fluttering voice like my grandmother (also neurotic). Fanny Price was clueless.