Ultralight For Sale

As a record collector, mainstream jazz fan & classical music-lover w/ about 4000 LPs & an equal number of CDs, I feel your pain. In his engaging ’03 history of the collecting mania, To Have & To Hold, Philipp Blom makes the point that the quest for a complete set of cherished items is an attempt to impose order on a chaotic world. The search has its challenges & satisfactions. But if the profile in last Monday’s Times of British editor & author Diana Athill is right, another pleasure awaits us: that of liberation toward the end of life from so many possessions. At age 91, the writer left her apartment, stocked with books & art, for an “old person’s home” where she felt surprisingly liberated not only from domestic chores, shopping, laundry & bills but also from all the belongings she no longer needed. Meanwhile, those of a little younger can pursue our passion for legendarily rare records, especially if we’ve managed to arrange for eventual disposition of our library. And there’s always the example of my friend who says that if he can’t take it with him, he’s not going.