clutter and meaning

Photographs I took of my old digs in Chicago, a hardwood floored studio in the Lakeview neighbourhood by the lakefront, where I lived in the early 90s. The images were meant to be arranged in a panoramic David Hockney-esque manner.

We as humans keep many things, stash many things, often subconsciously, as a way of creating a personal geography of experiences deep inside ourselves. Each object we've acquired, been given, stumbled upon, paid dearly for, and otherwise seen pass into our lives becomes a sort of banal marker, perhaps a small milestone, or if it involves great emotional or psychic associations, a deep symbolic depth. We store our objects away, sometimes carefully cataloged, sometimes haphazardly and without order, and we forget them until that one moment when we happen to be looking for something, as search or investigation triggered by a present event. That's when we become aware again, become attuned again, to the perhaps existential connections between one's self, the world, time, space, materiality, and passage.

A copy of the first American hardback edition of the novel The Mandarins by writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. I found it years ago in a used books shop in Chicago and read it ravenously for hours at cafe. I still haven't yet, but will eventually read, de Beauvoir's seminal proto-feminist work, The Second Sex.

Earlier today something I was reading online triggered a desire to find and look at a certain coffee table style book I had that showcased writers' houses, particularly the spare and spiritually spacious sea front home of one writer, my favourite home out of all of them and one I could easily see myself effortlessly living in for the rest of my life (I'll post about it soon). Of course, it took me a while to find this book but meanwhile the task became an adventure for me and before I knew it I was looking at all these things I had put away in storage, each item igniting remembrances - passages of moments, relationships, and moods.

Left: Most have been read, some not. Pooh was given to me 11 years ago by an erstwhile lover and friend, Piglet I bought some time later to keep Pooh company. Right: When I used to work as a designer in the fashion industry I bought this sterling silver ball from a wholesale vendor. It emits a soft, very tiny bell-like tinkle as it rolls or shakes, as if it's giggling, tickling my spirit and calming me. I keep it in a little aubergine velvet pouch. It has since tarnished (until I decide to give it a good polish).


Left: My old boss knew I was a bookworm of sorts, so she presented me with an ostrich skin cover she designed and made herself for whatever tomes I had that would fit it. Currently it protects my indispensible paperback copy of The Art of Living by Epictetus. I read quite a lot back then, usually at cafe near my apartment building, spending hours vanished in literature, philosophy, psychology, biographies, and anthologies. I ordered this luxurious, beautiful stark black calf leather cover from Levenger; it came with a bungie bookmark to secure the whole thing. People thought I was reading the Bible! I told them, "Sorry to disappoint you, but it's Voltaire." Right: I wonder how they'd react if I showed them what I'm reading now that I keep sheathed in this Bible-like book cover.

It was compelling. I had to take some pictures of them at the moment they were bubbling up those remembrances in me, in effect creating a meta memory.


Listen to the giggling silver ball (recorded via iPhone by the CellSpin app)!

And what about you, friend? What things of yours have you adventitiously come across while searching for something else that triggered the same experience? How did you react? What meanings do they hold for you?