I'm right now in the process of clearing out a house that has stuff from as far back as I can remember, and then some. I mentioned this whole "house thing" before. I was largely raised by my great-aunt and she was very sentimental and she kept everything.
I knew one day I'd have to go through the entire house: all the closets, dozens of boxes stashed away, a stuffed garage. I tended to think that it'd be when the house was mine... nope. That my 94 year old uncle is moving makes it just all this that much weirder.
Here's some of the stuff I've come across just today while cleaning out the garage:
- 5 boxes of schoolwork art projects from elementary school
-a picture of JFK, from when he was in office
- a 7/11 slurpee cup from the 70s with a picture of the indian geronimo on it
- a "boat bumper", which is a rope tied into a big mass of knots. A navy thing. I remember seeing this hang from the garage as far back as I can remember
- about 50 jars and buckets of paint, ranging from empty to half-empty, from 10 to 25, 30 years old. My uncle was a painter.
- a large roll of wax paper with the date "April 1961" on it
- a fan that weighs about 40 pounds and has to be at least 50 years old
- cars and "mad" paperback books: spy vs spy, don martin, sergio leones
- some very nasty chemicals: a small jar of sulfuric acid, "tinner's acid"; industrial strength pesticide from the 60s
- about a half dozen kerosene lamps
- probably a hundred empty cigar boxes used for storage, My uncle smoked cigars for 70 years of his life.
That's just the garage. There's already been hundreds and hundreds of photos. I found a scrapbook that my aunt had that had my birth bracelet from the hospital. Letters from relatives up to 40, 50 years ago. Postcards from the 50s, her school books from the 30s.
Oy...
It's like regurgitating the past, over and over, in slow motion.
I've already reached the point of "nostalgia overload".
I have my own stuff too. There are childhood toys and books -- concete markers of what it was like to be 8 years old. Then there is what you could consider my formative books: books on astrology, psychology, interview with Jim Morisson, 60s, psychedelics, etc.
And then in between there's an assortment of inert random objects: rocks, pens, crayons, scribble, books and papers that don't require a second thought to throw out.
At the major transitions in my life - going to college, going to japan, coming back from japan, getting my own place - I'd pack up a box of books, papers and other assorted crap and stash it in a box somewhere.
Now I'm coming across these mini time capsules, depth-charges.
Today's find:
a birthday card from my ex-girlfriend after we had already broken up.
It's amazing to see how the gooey raw emotion can gradually dry up, get bleached out by time. It bizzare how I know her more objectively now looking at it ten years down the line, yet at the same time I feel like I've almost forgotten everything. The knowledge of what happened, some of the memories are still there, but the emotional reaction is gone.
She had small, legible cursive writing.
There's a line like, "I know you've had such an *awful* time here." I still can't figure out if it's supposed to be sincere, joking or sarcastic.
It's just a dried up artifact, a documentation, a pointer to something I've lost.
For more than a couple of years it was easy to access that raw feeling, the "isness" of that moment. Now it's only a mental recontructruction.
What blows me away the most is to see how the last 8 years have just flown by.
Another thing:
One of my notebooks.
My notebooks were one of the following: entirely blank,
mundaneness and lists of what to do, e.g. go to bank, read pg 56
or things like: Confusion is god's way of telling you that you're not finished yet.
Something that I realized: this journal here is an adolescent vestige, the internet-age version of those notebooks.
I used to be much more in touch with "juice" of life. My life has gotten kind of dry and leathery these last years. Maybe it's a universal thing.
If I were to do a full brain dump this would be a 50 page journal entry. Any one of these objects (out of dozens) could shoot me off an a tangent.
I'll just have to call it quits now.
I'll have to give some more concerte listings and samples later.
I knew one day I'd have to go through the entire house: all the closets, dozens of boxes stashed away, a stuffed garage. I tended to think that it'd be when the house was mine... nope. That my 94 year old uncle is moving makes it just all this that much weirder.
Here's some of the stuff I've come across just today while cleaning out the garage:
- 5 boxes of schoolwork art projects from elementary school
-a picture of JFK, from when he was in office
- a 7/11 slurpee cup from the 70s with a picture of the indian geronimo on it
- a "boat bumper", which is a rope tied into a big mass of knots. A navy thing. I remember seeing this hang from the garage as far back as I can remember
- about 50 jars and buckets of paint, ranging from empty to half-empty, from 10 to 25, 30 years old. My uncle was a painter.
- a large roll of wax paper with the date "April 1961" on it
- a fan that weighs about 40 pounds and has to be at least 50 years old
- cars and "mad" paperback books: spy vs spy, don martin, sergio leones
- some very nasty chemicals: a small jar of sulfuric acid, "tinner's acid"; industrial strength pesticide from the 60s
- about a half dozen kerosene lamps
- probably a hundred empty cigar boxes used for storage, My uncle smoked cigars for 70 years of his life.
That's just the garage. There's already been hundreds and hundreds of photos. I found a scrapbook that my aunt had that had my birth bracelet from the hospital. Letters from relatives up to 40, 50 years ago. Postcards from the 50s, her school books from the 30s.
Oy...
It's like regurgitating the past, over and over, in slow motion.
I've already reached the point of "nostalgia overload".
I have my own stuff too. There are childhood toys and books -- concete markers of what it was like to be 8 years old. Then there is what you could consider my formative books: books on astrology, psychology, interview with Jim Morisson, 60s, psychedelics, etc.
And then in between there's an assortment of inert random objects: rocks, pens, crayons, scribble, books and papers that don't require a second thought to throw out.
At the major transitions in my life - going to college, going to japan, coming back from japan, getting my own place - I'd pack up a box of books, papers and other assorted crap and stash it in a box somewhere.
Now I'm coming across these mini time capsules, depth-charges.
Today's find:
a birthday card from my ex-girlfriend after we had already broken up.
It's amazing to see how the gooey raw emotion can gradually dry up, get bleached out by time. It bizzare how I know her more objectively now looking at it ten years down the line, yet at the same time I feel like I've almost forgotten everything. The knowledge of what happened, some of the memories are still there, but the emotional reaction is gone.
She had small, legible cursive writing.
There's a line like, "I know you've had such an *awful* time here." I still can't figure out if it's supposed to be sincere, joking or sarcastic.
It's just a dried up artifact, a documentation, a pointer to something I've lost.
For more than a couple of years it was easy to access that raw feeling, the "isness" of that moment. Now it's only a mental recontructruction.
What blows me away the most is to see how the last 8 years have just flown by.
Another thing:
One of my notebooks.
My notebooks were one of the following: entirely blank,
mundaneness and lists of what to do, e.g. go to bank, read pg 56
or things like: Confusion is god's way of telling you that you're not finished yet.
Something that I realized: this journal here is an adolescent vestige, the internet-age version of those notebooks.
I used to be much more in touch with "juice" of life. My life has gotten kind of dry and leathery these last years. Maybe it's a universal thing.
If I were to do a full brain dump this would be a 50 page journal entry. Any one of these objects (out of dozens) could shoot me off an a tangent.
I'll just have to call it quits now.
I'll have to give some more concerte listings and samples later.
VIEW 6 of 6 COMMENTS
linz:
i need to do all that... i am on a mission to get rid of half of my things. if that works out, i'll be content.
cellosoul:
Pointillist field trips...hm...I like your interpretation much better than what I had in mind. O--you're an artist too, ain't ya? Admit it (poke, poke)!
