You Like Your Panda Slippers, Don'tcha, Dear?

One day at work I decided it was high time for me to clean out my backpack.  There was a fair amount of just trash, receipts and the like, but I also extracted Mardi Gras beads, a purple sparkly studded jelly bracelet, a dozen tiny plastic figurines, a ball of yarn and knitting needles, two pocket knives, and a set of markers.  As I pulled these items out, my friend Jodi became more and more engrossed.

"Your bag is amazing," she said.

"You should see my house," I said.

There are very few pleasures in moving, but for a curatorial magpie like me, dismantling the time capsule of things I'd forgotten about is a big one.

Consider the bookshelf:  Surfing magazines from a college spring break, text books on art history, dance, and economics (plus one on cosmetology from the 60s or 70s), license plates from my first car, a gorgeous etching by David Itchkawich (not the one below, but wow, right?) that I haven't gotten around to framing, and, possibly my favorite, a scrap of paper wedged between two books that says, "So the first cosmonaut comes around and tries to fix the soda machine, but imagine his surprise because he doesn't even know where he's going to be."  I vaguely remember this last being a note about a dream I wanted to remember.  Well done, Meg, well done.


"Here's To You, Martin Schwab!" David Itchkawich, 1974.


I had resolved to be absolutely merciless in culling the curio collection that surrounds me, but it's harder than I anticipated.  I experienced a great sense of satisfaction when I tossed a box of tiny ends of drawing charcoal that I've been toting around for a decade.  I admired my steely reserve in throwing out some pre-teens' notes on the back of their catechism worksheet "Nelly is HOTTT! Usher is NOT...we're going to get caught he's looking over herrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr"  I can't really explain my obsession with found notes, but trust me, it was hard to let go, even of that mediocre specimen.

Where I fall down is when it comes to the tiny bits and pieces of memory: A red and white seed bead necklace my middle school boyfriend made me for Christmas, lovely charms for a bracelet I'm not likely to wear, but which might be used in making something else, for sure.  I think this item sums it up neatly:

The pill box was a memento of my stepdad's mother after her death when I was 6 or 7.  The smoky quartz I got in high school when I went through a superstitious crystals and tarot phase.  The charred looking thing in the middle is half of the penny my friends blew up by accident on purpose in a chemistry class at gifted camp. The dime is one minted all in silver. I got it when I was 14 and became briefly obsessed with currency, the gold standard and the Fed.  Normal people, I suspect, think, "Just. Throw. Them. Out."  Because it's trash. I know. But...

I find it more than a little magical that these tiny little talismans can conjure up not just the memory of where they came from, but whole swaths of nearly-lost moments.  One of these days I'll bust out my nostalgia rant (those of you who've read it elsewhere can go get a snack or take a bathroom break or something), but for now I'll just say that I am hugely, unapologetically nostalgic.  I am silly and sentimental and it's been the basis of nearly every successful creative endeavor I've engaged in.  Nostalgia for my personal past makes it all but impossible for me to be cutthroat when it comes time to pack.  Consider this:  I am packing for my twelfth move and these items made the cut to get this far with me.

But please, venture with me into even less sensible territory, the things I can't bear to part with out of some peculiar anthropological/archeological/sociological nostalgia.  The glossy 8x12 of an AP wire photo from 1934 in which several men in fedoras and long coats stand in a room full of sides of beef.  The man in the center was scratched out of the print by persons unknown before I found it in a Time Life history book I picked up as collage fodder.  I like to think about what it was like to be the men in the picture, to wonder who was in the middle, who scratched him out, why that person didn't just destroy the picture entirely.  A silly meditative exercise triggered by someone's trash that became my treasure.

This last one was actually the thing that triggered this post:

Yup, it's an itty bitty baby painted turtle mummy.  I found him in this condition, totally dehydrated and perfectly preserved near the loading dock of the U.S. Postal Service processing facility in Scarborough.  I love his lovely markings and tiny perfect little claws.  Animals are amazing and I'm obsessed with miniature things...hellooooo baby turtle mummy!!

                                                  Probably I will end up like this.


But when I found it today, my internal dialogue went like this:

Sensible Me:  "Okay, now, really..."

Magpie Me:  "Shut up, this turtle is awesome and perfect and amazing!"

SM:  "Yes, but what on earth do you need it for?"

MM:  "I'm going to put it in resin and put it in a project."

SM:  "You were going to do that seven years ago and it's still in the coffee lid you brought it home in.  PLEASE CAN WE AGREE NOT TO TAKE CORPSES?  That goes for the Tiger Swallowtail butterfly in the cassette case, too."

MM:  "NO! I agree to no such thing."

SM:  "I give up.  Why don't you keep those weathered broken chair slats for some imaginary future project, too?"

MM:  "Thanks, I think I will."

And I did.