A List of Things I Found Along the Way
I want to take this somehow, further.
A List of Things I Found Along the Way
I would say that I am a collector of things. Lost things. Found things. Broken and chipped things, half things, whole things. Any things.
My house is littered with things that were not always my own. Jars of broken glass, buttons and bottle caps. The connection is always in the stories of these things that were not always my own.
There is the smallest chunk of a broken glass tile, no larger than a quarter, on the table beside the front door. It seems black until you hold it up to the sun and then you can see the deepest of purples. The whole tile shattered on main street, falling from the side of a building I once passed daily going to and from home. I pass that building only every so often now because my home is in a different place.
A small, yellow plastic giraffe from Australia. I found him in Sydney park, nestled among the leaves at the base of a tree, as if his little girl had left him there to find a better way. He kept the coins in my pocket company for over a month before I brought him home to nestle within the leaves of my heart ivy.
An album’s worth of lost photographs and slides. People I never knew staring back at me. The woman who holds an ambiguous child smiles sadly when I pick her up. They left us at a thrift store, she whispers so that the child cannot hear her, I can’t believe they forgot who we were.
In the stereo plays a mixtape that was never made for me, created in the time beyond the novelty of the mixtape. I imagine the boy who made it carries around a polaroid camera, and loves things from before his time just for the sake of nostalgia. He smokes cigarettes for the sake of conversation with strangers, and drinks tea every morning from a chipped mug.
Two ceramic donkeys keep the plants company in my window sill. One is highlighted in yellow, the other in blue, one once used for salt, the other for pepper. A gift and reminder from a friend who could not afford to give gifts, but had so much of herself to give that she did anyway.
On the desk there is a glass milk bottle, filled with buttons. I collected them in the usual way, snipped off of clothes too worn to become anything but rags, found in the alleyways and on sidewalks where someone lost the ability to fully close their winter coat. The speckled colors remind me of the jar of jelly beans my grandmother once kept on her kitchen counter, the lid screwed too tight for anyone but my grandfather to open. Both jars hold a sense of promise inside.
Perfume bottles that never held my favorite scent, but were found in special places and so must be kept. The one with the stopper in the shape of a cat, once washed onto the bank of the river, now graces my bathroom shelf, a reminder of barefoot summer days wading through the frigid water of Looking Glass Creek. Beside it a tall, blue glass bottle, found empty in an almost empty house with no living owner. The house was decaying from the inside out, but there were still treasures inside to be salvaged - solid beams of cedar and the beauty accessories of a true lady.
The metal J from the motel sign, abandoned for years, where I had my first adventure with a boy who loved urban decay as much as I still do. I try to imagine where this foot tall J fit into the name of that place. But without the other letters I can only form the idea and remember the time he and I spent prying it’s rusty screws loose.
There are mounds of suitcases gathered in the corners of my house. Empty and full suitcases. Large and small suitcases. Small red train cases and large blue Samsonites with snakeskin patterns. They help me make certain journeys and remind me of them once the journeys are over.
The hand-me-down clothes that fill my closet, found in the thrift store dollar section or freely received from a friend moving without the space in the car for a gold silk camisole that never fit her right anyway.
One small drawer filled with knickknacks. Quarter machine prizes and dollar store army men with plastic parachutes. These are the remnants of the years I spent taking care of other people’s children. They are all older now, and there are too many of their faces to place in my memory, but I still have our toys - evidence of grocery store jaunts and playing at the park.
Love letters never meant for me to read, still sealed in envelopes addressed with a graceful script, hoping to send themselves to someone now gone. They almost lost all sense of context when I removed them from the army trunk, so carelessly tossed out by the offspring of the script’s owner. But they hold meaning in the envelope flaps sealed by a tongue aching to speak the written words to his beloved. In the same box where I keep the love letters are postcards of buildings now burned, torn down, decayed. These are pictures of once important landmarks of the city that has grown up, around and on top of them.
Typewriter keys from the instrument he once played. His words once flowed out through that rapping and tapping, the clicks of the levers keeping time with his mind. Reminders of the man with the handle-bar mustache who became more than a confidant in becoming an inspiration.
What will others do with my collections, once I’ve become the dust that gathers on their surfaces? Will someone pick and choose the perfect green bits of broken glass? Do my cameras have the ability to capture the stories of the person willing to pick them up from the rubble of my life? Will someone find the letters never written to me and assume I am a part of their story? Will my suitcases facilitate someone else’s wayward journey? I like to think so.
A List of Things I Found Along the Way
I would say that I am a collector of things. Lost things. Found things. Broken and chipped things, half things, whole things. Any things.
My house is littered with things that were not always my own. Jars of broken glass, buttons and bottle caps. The connection is always in the stories of these things that were not always my own.
There is the smallest chunk of a broken glass tile, no larger than a quarter, on the table beside the front door. It seems black until you hold it up to the sun and then you can see the deepest of purples. The whole tile shattered on main street, falling from the side of a building I once passed daily going to and from home. I pass that building only every so often now because my home is in a different place.
A small, yellow plastic giraffe from Australia. I found him in Sydney park, nestled among the leaves at the base of a tree, as if his little girl had left him there to find a better way. He kept the coins in my pocket company for over a month before I brought him home to nestle within the leaves of my heart ivy.
An album’s worth of lost photographs and slides. People I never knew staring back at me. The woman who holds an ambiguous child smiles sadly when I pick her up. They left us at a thrift store, she whispers so that the child cannot hear her, I can’t believe they forgot who we were.
In the stereo plays a mixtape that was never made for me, created in the time beyond the novelty of the mixtape. I imagine the boy who made it carries around a polaroid camera, and loves things from before his time just for the sake of nostalgia. He smokes cigarettes for the sake of conversation with strangers, and drinks tea every morning from a chipped mug.
Two ceramic donkeys keep the plants company in my window sill. One is highlighted in yellow, the other in blue, one once used for salt, the other for pepper. A gift and reminder from a friend who could not afford to give gifts, but had so much of herself to give that she did anyway.
On the desk there is a glass milk bottle, filled with buttons. I collected them in the usual way, snipped off of clothes too worn to become anything but rags, found in the alleyways and on sidewalks where someone lost the ability to fully close their winter coat. The speckled colors remind me of the jar of jelly beans my grandmother once kept on her kitchen counter, the lid screwed too tight for anyone but my grandfather to open. Both jars hold a sense of promise inside.
Perfume bottles that never held my favorite scent, but were found in special places and so must be kept. The one with the stopper in the shape of a cat, once washed onto the bank of the river, now graces my bathroom shelf, a reminder of barefoot summer days wading through the frigid water of Looking Glass Creek. Beside it a tall, blue glass bottle, found empty in an almost empty house with no living owner. The house was decaying from the inside out, but there were still treasures inside to be salvaged - solid beams of cedar and the beauty accessories of a true lady.
The metal J from the motel sign, abandoned for years, where I had my first adventure with a boy who loved urban decay as much as I still do. I try to imagine where this foot tall J fit into the name of that place. But without the other letters I can only form the idea and remember the time he and I spent prying it’s rusty screws loose.
There are mounds of suitcases gathered in the corners of my house. Empty and full suitcases. Large and small suitcases. Small red train cases and large blue Samsonites with snakeskin patterns. They help me make certain journeys and remind me of them once the journeys are over.
The hand-me-down clothes that fill my closet, found in the thrift store dollar section or freely received from a friend moving without the space in the car for a gold silk camisole that never fit her right anyway.
One small drawer filled with knickknacks. Quarter machine prizes and dollar store army men with plastic parachutes. These are the remnants of the years I spent taking care of other people’s children. They are all older now, and there are too many of their faces to place in my memory, but I still have our toys - evidence of grocery store jaunts and playing at the park.
Love letters never meant for me to read, still sealed in envelopes addressed with a graceful script, hoping to send themselves to someone now gone. They almost lost all sense of context when I removed them from the army trunk, so carelessly tossed out by the offspring of the script’s owner. But they hold meaning in the envelope flaps sealed by a tongue aching to speak the written words to his beloved. In the same box where I keep the love letters are postcards of buildings now burned, torn down, decayed. These are pictures of once important landmarks of the city that has grown up, around and on top of them.
Typewriter keys from the instrument he once played. His words once flowed out through that rapping and tapping, the clicks of the levers keeping time with his mind. Reminders of the man with the handle-bar mustache who became more than a confidant in becoming an inspiration.
What will others do with my collections, once I’ve become the dust that gathers on their surfaces? Will someone pick and choose the perfect green bits of broken glass? Do my cameras have the ability to capture the stories of the person willing to pick them up from the rubble of my life? Will someone find the letters never written to me and assume I am a part of their story? Will my suitcases facilitate someone else’s wayward journey? I like to think so.