So I wrote a lovely post, linking my enjoyment of our (relatively) new bathroom to contentment, world politics, and St Paul, and then it didn’t save. Typical. I actually manage to write about world politics, and nothing’s kept.
I should have gone back to the default of setting of writing about food, and all would have been well. Or I could have turned it into icecream. Or something.
Aha! I wrote one paragraph, uploaded it, and it’s still there. So there’s time to expand my theme, considering the many little things we see day to day, that our minds and brains take in, but we don’t think are there any more. It’s said that actually we do retain amazing amounts more than we know we do.
Reading an article about a couple who go around the UK, taking photos of all kinds of random things. The best one they showed in the article, I have to say, was a poodle dressed (I kid you not) in a brown shell suit, tethered outside a shop. I have a certain respect for people who set out to look for things that most of us don’t notice, or don’t think we’ve remembered.
I remember visiting a museum in Gloucester, the Pack Age, I think sadly no longer there. It was set up by one of the Opies, Robert if I remember, who collected (and still does now) lots and lots of packaging, I think mainly from the UK.
It was said that the older you were, the more you enjoyed the visit, because there were so many things that you would recall, that you had no idea you had filed away in your brain until you were presented with them again.
I probably do tend to hoard, rather than to live a clear and unfettered lifestyle. Moving house a lot growing up, things changed a lot, and it was attractive to keep lots of things, as a way of holding onto who I was at a particular time.
I would even keep items on my dressing table the same, because if I changed them, what record would there be of them ever having been like that? Thankfully I have moved away from this, and am probably swinging the other way, identifying what’s tying me down, what isn’t really worth keeping.
I could attempt a happy little homily about things that are saved having some value. And I guess that’s often true, although if we were to open our cupboards, we’d be amazed at how much we save that we don’t value.
My musings now in this blog are mainly a kind of brain dump, or virtual sharing of something that’s made me laugh, or think, or realise something new. Perhaps I need to lay them down for a while, to mature, even to gain some dust around the outside, in order to see if they become more valuable.
So perhaps after all, save it…you never know what it’ll turn out to be later.
Hello
I know just what you mean about facebook, and about hoarding…
I’m a compulsive hoarder, and completely relate to your attachment to the arrangement of the dressing table. I ‘blame’ (not really the appropriate word!) having had a happy childhood, and life generally, and not wanting to let anything slip away, from reality to memory and into nothingness. It’s also no doubt to do with retaining control, at least over something, in the midst of change. I have got around it over the past couple of years by taking of photos of lots and lots of very random things – hanging onto the memories, without all the associated clutter (although still enough associated clutter to do a fair job of filling a 3 bed house, as it turns out…) This is maybe a slight cop out, avoiding the real leaving behind…? But it has allowed me to do a lot of chucking out, so will do for now.
So to facebook, which seems to me related…
It’s so nice getting back in touch with people – but the act of starting an email with – oops, I didn’t mean to lose touch with you – is such an acknowledgement that things have actually changed… Things and people and relationships move on, no matter how many photos one takes. This was brought home to me the other day when I visited the hostel in Nepal where I lived and worked for 6 months, 2000-2001. I honestly half expected to see the kids I worked with running around outside… But of course they weren’t there, and the lady who opened the door (yes, I did knock) was very nice, and said they did work for the same organisation I had – but she wasn’t anything to do with my life, past or present. People, unlike my precious odds and ends, are not easily captured and kept in a photo.
But now there’s facebook…! I suppose the challenge for me is to not use it to ‘hoard’ friends (awful concept!), or to pretend that one’s relationship with one’s school friends can be the same as it always was – but to maintain a bit of a link with people’s new realities… And the other challenge, especially these 3 months, is not to become so involved in keeping up with people in the virtual world, that I forget to build new relationships with people in the actual world…
(Having said that, it’s great to discover the Frydmania page!)