Hoarding disorder.

The kitchen sink couldn't be seen for piles of dirty crockery, cutlery, cooking pans, mountains of unopened vintage tins of baked beans, soup, green beans and peas, carrots, pineapple, pears, peaches, potatoes, corned beef and spam and Irish stew, and soup.

The bedroom was inaccessible for stacked up furniture, baskets of clothes.

Picture frames faced the wall.

All was layered by decades of dust.

Hoarding disorder.

"There is no question that the continuous acquisition of stuff is the backbone of American culture. According to Sandra Stark, of the Peer-Led Hoarding Response Team at the Mental Health Association of San Francisco, "Seventy percent of home-owning Americans cannot park cars in their garages because there's too much stuff; one in 10 has a storage unit." ... In San Francisco alone, nearly $6.5 million is spent by landlords and service agencies each year on hoarding-related issues, which include eviction and the removal of children or the elderly due to health and safety concerns. Hoarding has been identified as a direct contributor to up to six percent of all deaths by house fire."

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-04/scientific-reason-you-cant-throw-your-stuff-away

All was layered 
by decades of dust.

Picture FRAMEs face the wall.

"Though the problem is getting more recognition, researchers are still working on an effective treatment."

Hoarding orderdis

There were  25,000 results. 
I read them all. 
I made a synthesis. 
I compiled the bibliography. 
It would be my life.
It would be my life's work.
It would be my life.
My life.
My life.
My life.
My life.
26,000 results.
59,000 results. 


I was determined to understand. 
I was determined to understand. 

"WHAT WE NEED IS TO MODERNISE."

They said.

"WHAT do we need to modernise the programme?"

They asked.

"What means shall we employ?"

They asked.

"Digital?"

"E-learning?"

"ONLINE"
"UNDERLINE"

A teacher used an academic term which left a gap but didn't register.

It was met with silence.

I wI was determined to understand. as determined to understand. 

I was deter   mined to un der

stand.

"BEFORE we speak about what.  Couldn't we talk about the terms which frame our discussion"

 I asked?

I was met with silence.

“The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free” 
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

They were so busy thinking about modernising. 

MODERN is NEW.

MODERN is BETTER.

“The peculiar predicament of the present-day self surely came to pass as a consequence of the disappointment of the high expectations of the self as it entered the age of science and technology. Dazzled by the overwhelming credentials of science, the beauty and elegance of the scientific method, the triumph of modern medicine over physical ailments, and the technological transformation of the very world itself, the self finds itself in the end disappointed by the failure of science and technique in those very sectors of life which had been its main source of ordinary satisfaction in past ages.

As John Cheever said, the main emotion of the adult Northeastern American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment.

Work is disappointing. In spite of all the talk about making work more creative and self-fulfilling, most people hate their jobs, and with good reason. Most work in modern technological societies is intolerably dull and repetitive.

Marriage and family life are disappointing. Even among defenders of traditional family values, e.g., Christians and Jews, a certain dreariness must be inferred, if only from the average time of TV viewing. Dreary as TV is, it is evidently not as dreary as Mom talking to Dad or the kids talking to either.

School is disappointing. If science is exciting and art is exhilarating, the schools and universities have achieved the not inconsiderable feat of rendering both dull. As every scientist and poet knows, one discovers both vocations in spite of, not because of, school. It takes years to recover from the stupor of being taught Shakespeare in English Lit and Wheatstone's bridge in Physics.

Politics is disappointing. Most young people turn their backs on politics, not because of the lack of excitement of politics as it is practiced, but because of the shallowness, venality, and image-making as these are perceived through the media--one of the technology's greatest achievements.

The churches are disappointing, even for most believers. If Christ brings us new life, it is all the more remarkable that the church, the bearer of this good news, should be among the most dispirited institutions of the age. The alternatives to the institutional churches are even more grossly disappointing, from TV evangelists with their blown-dry hairdos to California cults led by prosperous gurus ignored in India but embraced in La Jolla.

Social life is disappointing. The very franticness of attempts to reestablish community and festival, by partying, by groups, by club, by touristy Mardi Gras, is the best evidence of the loss of true community and festival and of the loneliness of self, stranded as it is as an unspeakable consciousness in a world from which it perceives itself as somehow estranged, stranded even within its own body, with which it sees no clear connection. 

But there remains the one unquestioned benefit of science: the longer and healthier life made possible by modern medicine, the shorter work-hours made possible by technology, hence what is perceived as the one certain reward of dreary life of home and the marketplace: recreation.

"Recreation and good physical health appear to be the only ambivalent benefits of the technological revolution.” 
― Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book

“It might seem to you that living in the woods on a riverbank would remove you from the modern world. But not if the river is navigable, as ours is. On pretty weekends in the summer, this riverbank is the very verge of the modern world. It is a seat in the front row, you might say. On those weekends, the river is disquieted from morning to night by people resting from their work.

This resting involves traveling at great speed, first on the road and then on the river. The people are in an emergency to relax. They long for the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. Their eyes are hungry for the scenes of nature. They go very fast in their boats. They stir the river like a spoon in a cup of coffee. They play their radios loud enough to hear above the noise of their motors. They look neither left nor right. They don't slow down for - or maybe even see - an old man in a rowboat raising his lines...

I watch and I wonder and I think. I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom.” 

― Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow  

“A paradox: the same century invented History and PHotography. But History is a memory fabricated according to positive formulas, a pure intellectual discourse which abolishes mythic Time; and the Photograph is a certain but fugitive testimony; so that everything, today, prepares our race for this impotence: to be no longer able to conceive duration, affectively or symbolically: the age of the Photograph is also the age of revolutions, contestations, assassinations, explosions, in short, of impatiences, of everything which denies ripening.” 
― Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography

“When nations grow old the Arts grow cold
And commerce settles on every tree” 
― William Blake

HO are DING disOrder.

The kitchen sink couldn't be seen for piles of dirty crockery, cutlery, cooking pans, mountains of unopened vintage tins of baked beans, soup, green beans and peas, carrots, pineapple, pears, peaches, potatoes, corned beef and spam and Irish stew, and soup.

The bedroom was inaccessible for stacked up furniture, baskets of clothes.

Picture frames faced the wall.

All was layered by decades of dust.

There were  25,000 results. 
I read them all. 
I made a synthesis. 
I compiled the bibliography. 
It would be my life.
It would be my life's work.
It would be my life.
My life.
My life.
My life.
My life.
26,000 results.
59,000 results. 


I was determined to understand. 
I was determined to understand. 

"the problem is getting more recognition, researchers are still working on an effective 

treatment."