I have been called a maximalist, by both absolute strangers as well as people with whom I share the same silverware drawer.
I’m forever “cleaning up”, “straightening”, and “organizing”. The trick is to just put things “back where they belong”. Most things have “a place to go”… books, for instance live on the bookshelf, vertically. Except for the few that are too large for the case, which have to go on top of it.
And then the ones that don’t necessarily fit and have to be placed atop the others, horizontally.
And the second row that goes in front of the first sometimes, because why waste all that space at the back of the bookshelf?
And then the nightstand, of course, and a bit of the floor next to the nightstand where the books that will eventually make their way to the nightstand are placed in a sort of staging ground.
But those are all places to go, technically.
Some things do not have a definitive home in our home because our apartment lacks a garage, music studio, and trophy room. I hold few trophies, but that is where the yo-yos, sonic screwdrivers, and Millennium Falcon model would go (not the LEGO one… I’m no Rockefeller). We could also benefit from a basement, where I’m told by my wife that “I would go” with “all my stuff”. She’s so protective.
Thus, until the house expands I must continually attempt to contract, a turtle inside a snail’s shell. I wish there was a similar metaphor that was less slow-moving, but it does seem that taking one’s house with them wherever one goes is a lumbering affair, and I guess I can relate.
I render my memories through specific objects. That old radio? Reminds me of how much I love oral storytelling, while that antique television antenna always brings to mind the wit and daring of the dawn of the medium…Sid Caesar…Lucille Ball…Ed Sullivan.
That signed photo of WWE Hall of Famer Trish Stratus represents how one person’s hard work and perseverance can pave the way for others, while that vintage framed 1940’s Aunt Jemima magazine advertisement keeps me both pragmatic and humble.
And that tiny little Spider-Man™ lunchbox is where I keep my guitar and banjo picks, so that’s, y’know, useful.
I celebrate memory by keeping it close, but don’t want to live inside it. I am often challenged by my family to choose what’s “most important” to me and “get rid of” the rest…but how to do such a thing? What memory is not worth remembering? Ok, the theme song to the 1979 sitcom “Hello Larry” starring McLean Stevenson, which for some reason I still remember… that could possibly go. But in regard to the vast majority of the objects in my home (and on my desk at work, and in my backpack, briefcase, and coat pockets) I am Time And Again comforted by their simple anchoring power, milestones and markers through life’s beautiful chaos.
I may be alone in this regard. The problem is that no one else in the house has a swell of emotion about that particular Hot Wheels™ car (the idea of having a dune buggy in Kansas City was the most awesome and impractical thing one could imagine (it didn’t even have any DOORS) ), or tv show dvd set (because Angie is a straight up Forgotten Classic and Bill Bixby’s “The Magician” - about a magician who solved crimes and lived (for some reason) on an airplane is epic, no question), or action figure (that is an original Uhuru from 1974…still has her insignia on the uniform!).
I try to explain, but then I have to talk a lot, which somehow compounds the annoyance; eyes gently roll as my family wanders away like ducks in an open field, pretending they forgot something in another room, or another apartment altogether.
There may indeed be a clinical name for this condition, and a recommended series of pills to discourage it, but I am not a “hoarder”, I know that for sure because I checked online with the intensity of a hypochondriac on WebMD.
As a private curator, I now understand the importance of labels in museums, as they offer context and history. I have a few photo albums from the early 1900s which are fascinating, but very few have any names or dates on them, so each picture is a riddle with no answer, open to interpretation, life turned to art, original meaning sadly entirely lost to time.
So I’ve begun an exhibit book for all the things I truly care about. I have vowed to donate, recycle, or trash anything not worth putting in the book. I do understand that the book itself will be one of the things that will eventually make it into the book, but I’m not working on that level of meta right now.
I just want to pass on the verbs within these nouns, the stories that I see, the little smiles these things bring me that bridge the gaps in my “it’s all gonna be ok” philosophy, the idea that the world can seem totally against you, but if you just sit down and read X-Men 143, things will probably work out.
Then you can put it straight back in the comic box, over there on top of the LEGO drawer, next to the bucket of lightsabers.
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