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| My favorite corner...in the living room |
I like odd combinations and love antiques. A great deal of my furnishings are hand-me-downs, gifts, or from estate sales, all mix 'n match funk but that is me to a tee. When I turned 50, I made a ritual of removing the last piece of "furniture" fashioned from cinder blocks, my facsimile of a t.v. stand. It is fine to have cinder blocks on the deck but within the confines of a grown-ass woman's home, hell no.
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| Library full of poetry and music/media |
People often chastise me or question my attachment. When I bought my house, many asked if I was going to get rid of a lot of my belongings as I packed. I told them no way. What was I buying a house for if I could not have my familiar all around me? Of course, it is 14 years later and there are boxes in the attic that I have not yet unpacked but part of that stash includes books that I have no wall space left to display. Another issue: I am not big on dusting frequently. Oh well.
Although I love looking at my doodads and paintings, my collections of angels, boxes, elephants, and hearts, my rocks and crystals, I have no illusions about it:
- Number one: I am a bit eccentric, even neurotic, and my stuff soothes me in very particular ways known only to me in the deepest recesses.
- Number two: my collection of stuff is a reflection of the inside of my mind. Some people even know how to determine my mood or state of being by reading the interior of my home.
- Number three: someday I will die and my stuff will go back out into the universe, which is where it came from when it came to live with me in the first place. Some of it will become landfill. Some of it will go to friends and family as a way to remember the light I have held for what is now 60 years. Some of it will be sold to people looking for cool shit or a bargain. I would like the art to be returned to those artists who created it, if I predecease them.
I am merely the steward of this home, this land upon which the house was built, and all the goodies inside. I derive much pleasure from it all. And it is just on loan from the universe.
A few years back, I starting asking my beloveds to tell me if there were things in my collections that they wanted when I pass, items they either have always admired or those that may remind them of me in particular, that would draw me close when I am no longer tangible. I was completely surprised that my innocent query freaked a number of folks out. They would not discuss it. They asked me not to utter such things.
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| Pie safe in kitchen |
But the truth is, none of us gets out of here alive. And contrary to the notions of the pharaohs, the emperors, the popes, and the Koch Brothers, we can't take our shit with us, no matter how elaborate our crypt or how many might be sacrificed with our remains.
I know I am just holding all of this for someone for awhile. I also know it is time to catalog it all. Then, time to finally draw up a will. And figure out who gets my archives. Oh...certainly, my work is cut out for me...namaste...
Things give the illusion that somehow we have control over loss. My sig ot saves things for years and years. Mugs from her college days that she only uses when I point out that she hasn't used them in years. Electrical cords and cables of all kinds for things we don't own -- an entire drawer full that she hasn't opened since we moved into our house a decade ago. Her office is such a disaster that she's begun using the guest room for project space. All of this because her heart is, in some ways, so fragile that she can't part with objects without feeling a loss. I believe it is the threat of being crushed by loss that makes some people willing to risk being crushed by things. At least it's contact.
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