*JUNE, WHAT WENT WRONG, REDUX, BEGIN AGAIN*
JUNE:
This is the basement as it looked last summer.
As I wrote in June, this is the first and most obvious source of embarrassment. This clean-up will not be easy or quick. There will hard decisions that I have to make, and time will be lost when I discover a box of stuff to go through. Also, despite my conservationist leanings, there will be some things that just won’t be disposed of properly.
JUNE:
This is the basement as it looked last summer.
As I wrote in June, this is the first and most obvious source of embarrassment. This clean-up will not be easy or quick. There will hard decisions that I have to make, and time will be lost when I discover a box of stuff to go through. Also, despite my conservationist leanings, there will be some things that just won’t be disposed of properly.
If I’m not back (like, you don’t see me on Facebook) in a day, send help. Something fell on me, or I’m curled up in a pile of my grandfather’s old shirts, sad.
WHAT WENT WRONG:
That was the beginning and immediate the end of my attempt to classify all this crap. Today, it currently looks the same if not worse. Why did I stop? First, for a variety of reasons, we ended up not moving. But that decision wasn't made until August. I started this in June, and by all accounts I really should have been packing the mess. However, I think I put in a good week and then quit. It really was overwhelming. Touching all these things—a splintered badminton racquet, a bottle of men’s after shave in a glass pinecone bottle, the (almost) complete collection of the Sesame Street Library, a whole box called “College”—just stirred up their energies and recharged their significance, which, for a long time had just been hidden in boxes in this pit of despair.
I begin again. I was largely inspired by Underwater New York’s recent collaborative effort with Significant Objects, a project in which a story is written about a found object or one purchased at a flea market thus giving a seemingly insignificant object meaning, something I do everyday. Significant Objects then auctions off the newly meaningful objects, donating the proceeds to charity, thus preying on those of us who have this disease of keeping! It’s a great experiment.
WHAT WENT WRONG:
That was the beginning and immediate the end of my attempt to classify all this crap. Today, it currently looks the same if not worse. Why did I stop? First, for a variety of reasons, we ended up not moving. But that decision wasn't made until August. I started this in June, and by all accounts I really should have been packing the mess. However, I think I put in a good week and then quit. It really was overwhelming. Touching all these things—a splintered badminton racquet, a bottle of men’s after shave in a glass pinecone bottle, the (almost) complete collection of the Sesame Street Library, a whole box called “College”—just stirred up their energies and recharged their significance, which, for a long time had just been hidden in boxes in this pit of despair.
I begin again. I was largely inspired by Underwater New York’s recent collaborative effort with Significant Objects, a project in which a story is written about a found object or one purchased at a flea market thus giving a seemingly insignificant object meaning, something I do everyday. Significant Objects then auctions off the newly meaningful objects, donating the proceeds to charity, thus preying on those of us who have this disease of keeping! It’s a great experiment.
But the problem for me is that once given meaning, I need to hold on to the object, love it, cherish it, put it in a box and be warm and happy knowing it’s there for me anytime I want to feel that way, not unlike Boxing Helena, right down to captive ridiculing captor. (You know that awful, soft-core porn movie with Sherilyn Fenn, directed by the bungling daughter of David Lynch?)
BEGIN AGAIN:
So, here goes my experiment. I don’t the rules yet, but I know I need to sort some stuff out, decide what to keep and what to get of, why this happened, and how to not let it happen again.
So, here goes my experiment. I don’t the rules yet, but I know I need to sort some stuff out, decide what to keep and what to get of, why this happened, and how to not let it happen again.
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