Thursday, July 26, 2007

Cha-Ching!

I am putting on a small studio-moving sale this Sat! This will be your last chance to own a piece of my old stuff. I am making room for new work.

If I could enter a monastery, and the instructions were that I could only come with myself and the clothes on my back-- that would be so fantastic.

I have had the time to think about the past, and what it means (or doesn't). Essentially, it doesn't exist anymore. The things we can hold on to are so ephemeral. I had three big bags of toys from my childhood. Going through those gave me a material impression that my parents loved me. I can call them on the phone and they could tell me that directly. When they die, I won't have to wonder, and not just because of three bags of stuffed animals. I am finding a lot of evidence of how badly I drew when I was young (which is evidence that art education can improve the way you draw), and other goofy stuff.

Childhood was great because we graduated, we commenced, we had to go to new schools, and try new things. Now that I have been out of school nearly a decade, I am finding things get stagnant so quickly. I spent the morning unloading nearly the rest of my attic to a woman who lost her house in a fire and just need "everything." All the boxes of old toys and books strewn across the living room floor looked as if a flood ripped through the attic and threw everything down, willy-nilly. It looked sad, the evidence of my life-thus-far. I'd love to say that I lost everything in a Great Flood.

I found my box of diaries. I started writing in 1989 and I had kept every single one. I secretly thought that this would be some brilliant oeuvre, that posterity would find it and discover what a brilliant and witty girl I was. As I tore through them (getting them prepped for recycling) I caught a few sentences here and there. The writing was pretty inane. Somehow, the world will survive without them. I saved two, my very first one and the one I kept when I went to college. I will read them in the future and laugh (unless they don't survive a second purge).

4 comments:

Kay Cooke said...

It is a kind of bravery to let go of the past like that - an admirable sort. I've kept hold of too much - but then I can't bear to throw it out either.
My poor kids will have to sort through it all in the end - so I guess throwing it out would be a kindness to others too, saving them the angst of what to do with all this stuff that means nothing to them.
Oh dear. What to do?
Move more maybe! Join a monastery. It's a tempting thought.

jessica said...

snap. being a pack rat myself, anything left after your sale? any art you'd part with for ten dollars? its all the money i have in american bills, plus shipping.

there was an interesting blurb in the newspaper today (http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,2135084,00.html). looking around my messy flat full of things never used but stored away for future kids to play with or to show the grandkids how things were, and really, they're photographed in books, they're shown in movies, do they really need to be clogging up my shelves for potentialities? for now yes, until i catch your purging bug.

Anonymous said...

S'vale is boring, yet again. I should go to Flip Flop and throw stuff away with you.
H

Anonymous said...

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

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