The Dig of a Lifetime
I wonder if real-world excavation sites are anything like spring cleaning (notwithstanding the fact that it's autumn). First, you decide on a place to start - a closet, a drawer, a crypt, a mound. Today, I started in a drawer that was only half full at any given time with bric-a-brac instead of clothes. You clear the early debris: bits and bobs, clothes that no longer fit, the first layers of sediment. Then your task expands to nearby sites, in my case, other drawers and closets and finally the rest of the room. And then, as you dig, the piles start to form. There are things that can be thrown out, things that need to be reshuffled, and things that appear to have come from some other place.
Occasionally, you strike gold. Maybe it's a sweater you loved but packed away for the summer. Or maybe it's something that looks like trash but is something you treasure, like shards of sea shells taken from a lovely beach trip, or a movie ticket stub so worn away that only the title of the film remains visible in ghostly ink. Joe Dirt wasn't a film I'd planned to see, let alone to like, but it was the film Nathan and I chose to hide behind in our earliest attempts to be alone in the dark. That waxy gray ticket might as well have been a holy writ for the reverence I felt when I held it, and it might as well have been a strip of thousand year old parchment for the delicate way I moved it to another location.
You sneeze in the dust until, when you blow your nose, your mucus is tinged with dirt. You push the hair out of your eyes and feel a light sweat as you haul boxes and push through to remote corners. When you finally break for lunch, you feel truly satisfied with the day's work.
It's never done, of course. There are always new layers or hidden places to explore. There are things you forgot you had or things you forgot you lost. It's like a journey to the subconscious, spring cleaning. And as days pass into history you know it'll never be finished. Even after you die, your things will wing their way into new homes, or they'll lie buried in dust until someone unearths them again, or they'll be the shards of civilization that future archaeologists find. No one will remember that that doll or book or painting belonged to you, but you'll have left your own faint, ephemeral impression on its being.
Like a ghost, you will haunt the clothes you wore in joy and the things you pressed to you in sorrow. If you try, you can feel the resonance build even now. Some won't pay attention to your mark, just as some don't pay attention to the living. But others will sense it and be proud in the same vague way we are proud of the smallest bits and bobs in museums. It's not just that they're evidence of earlier times or of human ingenuity. It's that they mattered to someone, once - just as we mattered to someone, once.
Our possessions are like motes of dust that cling to us for a time - sometimes for many years, other times for months or days - before spinning outward toward another source. At the end of our lives, there is a beautiful explosion of pieces, as dust in a shaft of sunlight will swirl in a breeze. All dust is precious, in that all beautiful things are precious; we value those things that make our lives pleasant. But it is the fact that we were ever here, that we were ever at the heart of our own solar sphere of connections, that makes archaeology so worthwhile.
Like literature, and mathematics, and science, and just about every other avenue of study you can name, archaeology helps us to trace the patterns of existence. But spring cleaning reminds us of the personal relevance of each piece of an unending puzzle. This is what I wore on our first date. This is my grandmother's painting. This is the desk on which I was changed as an infant. (This is, not coincidentally, why stealing is such a terrible thing. You have no idea of the relevance of even the most trivial thing to its owner. Value isn't just in money, and loss is not just a matter of monetary expense.)
Spring cleaning reminds us to make our trash someone else's treasure. I never get done without at least one bag of things to pass on, donate, or sell.
And most importantly, spring cleaning bids us make room for the future while honoring the past. New pictures, new clothing, new gifts and new miscellanea that will speak their memories only to me - for the first time in some time, I am happily waiting for new memories to take shape.
Occasionally, you strike gold. Maybe it's a sweater you loved but packed away for the summer. Or maybe it's something that looks like trash but is something you treasure, like shards of sea shells taken from a lovely beach trip, or a movie ticket stub so worn away that only the title of the film remains visible in ghostly ink. Joe Dirt wasn't a film I'd planned to see, let alone to like, but it was the film Nathan and I chose to hide behind in our earliest attempts to be alone in the dark. That waxy gray ticket might as well have been a holy writ for the reverence I felt when I held it, and it might as well have been a strip of thousand year old parchment for the delicate way I moved it to another location.
You sneeze in the dust until, when you blow your nose, your mucus is tinged with dirt. You push the hair out of your eyes and feel a light sweat as you haul boxes and push through to remote corners. When you finally break for lunch, you feel truly satisfied with the day's work.
It's never done, of course. There are always new layers or hidden places to explore. There are things you forgot you had or things you forgot you lost. It's like a journey to the subconscious, spring cleaning. And as days pass into history you know it'll never be finished. Even after you die, your things will wing their way into new homes, or they'll lie buried in dust until someone unearths them again, or they'll be the shards of civilization that future archaeologists find. No one will remember that that doll or book or painting belonged to you, but you'll have left your own faint, ephemeral impression on its being.
Like a ghost, you will haunt the clothes you wore in joy and the things you pressed to you in sorrow. If you try, you can feel the resonance build even now. Some won't pay attention to your mark, just as some don't pay attention to the living. But others will sense it and be proud in the same vague way we are proud of the smallest bits and bobs in museums. It's not just that they're evidence of earlier times or of human ingenuity. It's that they mattered to someone, once - just as we mattered to someone, once.
Our possessions are like motes of dust that cling to us for a time - sometimes for many years, other times for months or days - before spinning outward toward another source. At the end of our lives, there is a beautiful explosion of pieces, as dust in a shaft of sunlight will swirl in a breeze. All dust is precious, in that all beautiful things are precious; we value those things that make our lives pleasant. But it is the fact that we were ever here, that we were ever at the heart of our own solar sphere of connections, that makes archaeology so worthwhile.
Like literature, and mathematics, and science, and just about every other avenue of study you can name, archaeology helps us to trace the patterns of existence. But spring cleaning reminds us of the personal relevance of each piece of an unending puzzle. This is what I wore on our first date. This is my grandmother's painting. This is the desk on which I was changed as an infant. (This is, not coincidentally, why stealing is such a terrible thing. You have no idea of the relevance of even the most trivial thing to its owner. Value isn't just in money, and loss is not just a matter of monetary expense.)
Spring cleaning reminds us to make our trash someone else's treasure. I never get done without at least one bag of things to pass on, donate, or sell.
And most importantly, spring cleaning bids us make room for the future while honoring the past. New pictures, new clothing, new gifts and new miscellanea that will speak their memories only to me - for the first time in some time, I am happily waiting for new memories to take shape.