picking through

I am sitting here in my room, trying to think of something witty or interesting to say... and am not coming up with much. But as my eyes wander about my room, I notice postcards and posters from exhibits and museums, trinkets found at antique stores and on my various travels, a multitude of pashminas and an almost unmanageable stack of books and magazines (mostly art related)... and I begin to think how odd/marvelous it is the way we tend to carry these things about. For instance, I have a fairly extensive collection of postcards from museums that I have been to, and I never really know what to do with them but feel strangely compelled to have them with me. Surely I am in some ways buying into the idea of ownership, that of being able to take home a bit of a masterpiece if you will. But more importantly, they are the evidence of my trip, fascination, appreciation, longing... whatever it was that I felt when standing in front of that particular work of art. In that way, most of the things adorning these otherwise particularly bland walls represent some important memory or event for me, be it a semester in Paris, my grandmother, or an unnatural obsession with Jonny Lang.

I suppose what I find so interesting about of all of this is how we capture these memories or desires, visually... pictures, magazine clippings, postcards, posters, maps... hung on the wall. That is how we begin to own a space, by hanging things on the wall and decorating that space to suit our tastes etc... Bedrooms, living rooms, hallways then become a visual representation of ourselves in a way in that this is what we choose to surround ourselves with and how we present ourselves to others who may visit that space. That makes us all curators of sorts, exhibiting our lives within the walls of our homes.

I apologize if this makes no sense at all (I personally blame the copious amounts of cold medication)... but as I now prepare to move onto the "next phase of my life" (after having been recently accepted to graduate school in New York!), I cannot help but to think about not only how I will fit all of this stuff into an apartment the size of a shoe box, but how these things/my trophies are going to be the daily reminders of where I've come from. Starting over can be a very daunting thing, but certainly even more so if you do not have something to hold onto from before... And so I will pack up my postcards of Picassos and Rodins, boxes of aging pictures, and piles of books that will take me years to get to because that's pretty much who I am. An uncertain girl with pack rat-like tendencies who clings to all of this stuff to have a sense of what has been done and what comes next.