{ tHE MESS HE MADE}


a path, both literally and figuratively, to a cleaner, less cluttered life. It would be like living in a hotel suite. “I’ll report back to you soon,” I said. But the tools have to be used for them


to work, and only I could employ them. A week went by. Mo called to see how I was doing. I didn’t call her back. I sent her a note saying that The Washington Post was dispatching a photographer to take pictures of my messes, so I couldn’t touch anything. That was essentially true, though I could have bought the bookshelf and tidied up a smidge. The photographer came, and a few more weeks went by. Of the many excellent suggestions Mo offered, I had imple- mented exactly none.


We sat in a circle in a small class- room down the hall from Frost’s office. I was tense. My audience was students specializing in the study of abnormal behavior, and I was the abnormal one. As I introduced myself, I stumbled over my words. But as I talked more, offer- ing details about my slobbiness, I grew more comfortable. I felt like I was un- loading a secret, a burden. The dozen students of Psychology 354, Seminar in Advanced Abnormal Psychology: The Meaning of Possessions, were there to help me, not judge me. In that setting, I began to sense, for the first time, why so many interventions had failed. “My wife and I were in a book-


store recently,” I told the students, “and she said, ‘I don’t know why you’re shopping in a bookstore; you have accu- mulated a bookstore next to the bed.’ ” A few students giggled. That pleased me, probably, I realized, because my identi- ty has become tied up with being a slob, just as Woody Allen’s is tied up in being a hypochondriac. The students were shrinking me, as the saying goes, but I was also shrinking myself. “I had garbage bags everywhere,”


I said, detailing my attempts to clean my apartment before I left Boston. “One of the garbage bags happened to have a light bulb in it for some rea- son, and I stepped on it with my bare feet and needed surgery.” I waited for the students to laugh. They didn’t. One gasped. Maybe this wasn’t something to laugh at. Maybe, all along, there has


been an audience of one: me. Later, I would learn from Frost that I


keep my stuff on tables and in piles be- cause having everything in plain sight provides comfort and, in a sense, a form of organized disorganization. If I can see it, I know it’s there. That was the prac- tical explanation. But as the students questioned me — about the pleasure I feel acquiring stuff, the anxiety I feel tossing it — I sensed that there was something deeper, more philosophical. And it was this: All of the stuff I pile up is a sort of second body, my twin. I am Michael Rosenwald, and those piles — the books, magazines, fountain pens, inks, newspapers, everything — are also me. The more I have of it, the more I am me. Up there in front of the class, I was beginning to confuse myself, and then I felt as if I might cry. I blurted this out to the class: “What would I be without it all?”


18 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | June 13, 2010


Frost said: “What am I without my


things? That gets to this whole issue. A sense of identity. What am I without my stuff? What’s happened over the years is the stuff has somehow invaded your sense of self, your identity, because without it you feel like you don’t know who you are.” That clicked. I will buy books more


than once because I can’t remember if I bought them or not, and I feel like if I don’t get them, I will never have a chance to have them again, and I need those books. I need them, it turns out, to keep up with my concept of myself. I re- cently bought a copy of a magazine that I had bought two weeks before. When I


out to the class: ‘Wha The author


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