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so many things. [kerri’s blog on not-so-flawed wednesday]

i am diving into the worlds of facebook marketplace, ebay, poshmark, craig’s list. we are spending long days in the basement – going through, organizing, separating out that which is to be kept, that which is to be sold, so much of which is to be donated. thirty-five years – in the same house – is a long time to accumulate things and there are many boxes and giant plastic bins to open…and…this is not our first rodeo down there. it’s been nasty weather and it’s negative-whatever outside so this a perfect time for this. i know that any stopping of the momentum will – yes – stop the momentum. so we don’t stop.

on a shelf unit with many books of many colors, i came upon a collection of volumes – all ten of them, making a complete set. they are the 1908/1909/1910 copyrighted gold-leaf-gilt-edged editions of “the bible and its story – taught by picture lessons”. there are beautiful penned illustrations throughout, published by ira hiller (ny). it is a significant collection. but not one that i want to keep. i don’t remember the backstory – where or who these came from. and i know that, though i have not once opened them to read, there is someone ‘out there’ who would want to add this to their personal collection. and so, i will sell it. with the exception of a little water damage on volume 6’s back cover, it’s in quite excellent condition. research will help me set a price – i’ll not ask for top dollar, though, for i want to move this out and into someone else’s hands for their own home library. 

it’s an interesting predicament – setting prices. even with research, it all seems somewhat arbitrary. a thing is only – truly – worth what someone else will pay for it, i am reminded. and so, i keep that in mind as i hold things in my hand, maybe photograph them for memory-sake and place them on the dining room table for an ad photo shoot, the writing of a description, pricing and uploading. i wonder what value someone else will have for these things – so many things – that were mine but that need to move on. 

for value is a funny thing. for some, it is in the name of the maker, the label tucked in the collar, the brand on the purse or the jacket or the furniture piece or the vehicle. for some, it is the gilded antique, the collectible, the museum piece. for some, it is the barbie doll or the hummels or the annual dated ornament. for some, it is the scrap of paper found in an old purse with toddler-print that says “i love you”. for some, it is the yoyo quilt your grandmother made; the one in which you recognize the fabric of clothes you once wore. in amish tradition, “an object cared for in a home can turn into a shining thing.” (sue bender) 

the things i or we choose to keep may not be the festooned bric-a-bracs of someone else’s sensibility. they may be much simpler, more thready and less dollar-attached. they have old narrative worn into their object-souls and – even now, decades later maybe – they can still elicit an array of emotions. the relationships, the art form, life’s riverdance all woven into the things we may choose to keep.

we keep unearthing, unboxing, moving items from one spot to another. “life’s all about moving your patches around,” and i believe this to be true. it’s all fluid. we will keep working until we finish the first pass through of the stuff-of-life and then – and only then – will we be able to start the second pass through.

“simplify and then go deeper, making a commitment to what remains.”

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY

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waiting for the spaceship. [kerri’s blog on d.r. thursday]

and the shiny brite spaceship gathered all the excess – from the basement, the attic, every nook and cranny – and took off at warped speed, giant contrail following it, chugging into outer space, lugging it all to the delighted beings on another planet. 

in my dreams.

no…this is cleaning out that i can’t avoid. it is time.

and all the books on our planet on this topic – ie: the konmari method (ala marie kondo), claire middleton’s sentimental person’s guide to decluttering, etc etc etc – don’t reeeeally help. (however – here’s a pro tip – sitting and reading these books certainly does successfully delay actually doing it!)

the other day we sold rockband. it was a complete set and kept in pristine condition. we sat in a grocery store parking lot and waited for the guy who bought it off craig’s list to show up. because it was christmas eve i brought a giant roll of wide ribbon so that he could simply wrap the box in lots of ribbon to put under the family tree. the moment he drove away in his hatchback – stuffed with the huge box in which i had carefully wrapped all the elements and instruments of the game – i was hooked. 

it’s time to clean out.

i guess the first place to start is the closet and the dresser. now, we only have one dresser – i have four drawers and d has one. our closets are small – remember, this is an old house – and it’s difficult to see everything because they are too tightly hung with clothing. looking at my clothes, i always ponder a few things: will this ever fit again? how can i give this away when i have emotional attachment to it? will i need this skirt/dress/pair of pants/blazer if i ever have a “traditional” job again? what about concert attire? and shoes…yikes. there’s a whole ‘nother issue. i haven’t bought many shoes at all in recent years – like the last ten or fifteen, but i still have shoes that i wore in 1995, so there are a few pairs in my closet, the closet in the sitting room and in a bin in the basement. the ones i wear over and over? very few. i suspect that is a theme…for most of us…for most of the things we place on our bodies and on our feet.

and so, it’s time.

it’s not like you haven’t read this here before. it is – yes – a recurring theme. i googled my own writings and was reminded this yen-to-shed-stuff has been going on for years. even in 2021 i wrote about the “lateral list” of things to do. let’s just say i’ve been gaining momentum. gearing up. stoking my ruthless.

eh. let’s just say i’ve been procrastinating. isn’t that what basements and attics are for? the indulging of procrastination. yup.

anyway, i have been bitten by the craig’slist, marketplace, ebay bug. maybe a few things can generate a grocery trip or two. otherwise, “free porch pick-up” and “donate here” sound good. 

the up-north gang gathered before the holiday and sipped brandy slushies. we each talked about how we had saved bins of toddler clothes, toys, trinkets for our children, now, all grown-up. we have the corners of attics and storage rooms in basements with giant plasticware carefully storing these treasures we were certain our children would want. only they don’t. they don’t want any of it. here we are, children of great depression parents – certain we were doing the right thing, the frugal thing, and yes, yes, the sentimentally thready thing – and they, children of children of great depression parents – are far enough removed from all that heavy sense of handing-it-down/passing-it-on responsibility – that they all astoundingly tell us “no thanks”. without remorse. even flippantly. as opposed to our voices when our own parents passed bins and bins and boxes and such on to us…respectfully and gratefully accepting it all, even with no clear idea what to do with it, just trusting in the storage capacity of our basements and attics. so here we all are – with bins and bins and boxes and such – in the emotionally perilous journey of cleaning out. not for the meek at heart.

it’s time.

and so, is there anyone out there who would like vintage puffy santas or the sesame street vintage play gym or a smattering of noritake china with teapot or a collection of disney vcr tapes or an 8-track player complete with 8-track tapes? perhaps multiple tiny oshkosh overalls or polly flinders smocked toddler dresses? or some fenton hobnail milk glass pieces? or decorative plates for hanging? 

time.

mayyyybe.

what i really need is a nap and a spaceship. now. 

*****

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dale of allendale. [two artists tuesday]

dale is a pretty good name for a turkey. but then, so is allen. we decided on dale. (even though i am now, post-visit, thinking allen is funnier.) regardless, dale strutted his stuff around our allendale neighborhood for a few days, acting like he belonged here and we were the aliens.

the first afternoon we saw him, we stopped the car and pretty much just stared at him walking down the sidewalk. he gobbled at us watching him and then harumphed into the street to get to the proverbial other side. then, walking around littlebabyscion, he kept heading west. we saw him another time or two wandering about but haven’t seen him now for days. maybe he moved on or maybe he heard about forest park and headed there – a neighborhood west of us that a turkey named carl called home for quite some time.

i suppose it’s easier to change ‘hoods when you’re a turkey. it’s not like you are carrying much baggage with you. unless he had them stuffed under some bushes somewhere, he carried no suitcases, no boxes or plastic bins. he didn’t have his offspring’s elementary artwork or handwritten stories, the driftwood he found on the ocean, heart rocks he collected on trails, photo albums dating back decades. there were no pots and pans, no spices-in-a-box, no favorite jeans or boots or that old ratty flannel shirt he couldn’t bear to toss out. he had no bill folder, no cellphone, no ipad, no coffee grinder or french press. no cds or dvds or canvases or paintbrushes or pencils or paper.

dale had just nothing. yet he looked as though he was completely confident in the world, wandering, exploring, warbling in that gurgling kind of way. apparently, male turkeys do that most often in the spring when they are looking for love. he must have thought that (one of) thelovesofhislife might be in allendale.

a friend of mine is moving from her home of decades. the decision to move was pragmatic and the move will be generative for them. and yet, there is the whole moving-from piece of it. sometimes i think about that. i understand the need to run and touch every glass doorknob, to brush the woodfloor with one’s fingertips, to wander from room to room, deep in memory. when i think about moving – i know that there would be much stuff to go through, dispose of, to give away. but it’s this place – this house – that holds so many emotions. it’s a mixed bag. after all this time – this town feels like home. after all this time – this town doesn’t feel like home. both are true. the dichotomy of these truths wakes me in the night sometimes and i ponder staying, going.

i used to tell the kids – when they were making a decision – to imagine themselves having made it one way and to feel what that feels like. then, imagine making it the other way and try to immerse in how that feels. it’s not always possible, but sometimes it’s an exercise that helps. in the middle of the night, it’s a seesaw.

what i do know is – as i look around this cherished home – that i must turkey-down. not so much on the main floors, but most definitely in the basement where the bins and boxes are stacked, waiting maybe for dale to come and retrieve them.

ahh, but dale is footloose and fancy-free and he has no interest in such baggage. he’s got places to go and things to see. he’s got a world to love. he blows a kiss to allendale and moves on.

*****

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the pink backpack. [k.s. friday]

“it’s projection,” he wrote. yes. bill penzey is right. it is projection. we project love onto objects and we “really see these objects as love.” he continues, talking about his desire – were there to be a fire in his house – to grab the six-quart stainless kettle he has popped corn in for every movie night he has had with his wife, and his love of the heavy-duty spatula his father gave him, adding, “and in a world where nobody gets too much love anymore, i want to do all i can to hold onto that love.” he is clearly thready. i’ve never met him, but he is on my list – people with whom i’d love to have dinner.

we have a pink backpack. it’s packed from back in the days our town was on fire, days i can feel and hear and smell and taste – viscerally – but would rather not. we’ve kept it packed, realizing that it’s wise to have one thing to grab and one place to go to find that one thing. it has important stuff in it…papers and such. it doesn’t have the tiny cheese knife we use every day, the one that was my sweet momma’s. it doesn’t have the wedding ring my dad wore or the matching flannel shirt of a pair. it doesn’t have the toddler drawings of my children or the small bowl turned trinket-holder that babycat ate from. it doesn’t have zillions of photographs. it doesn’t have masters of all my albums or a collection of jpgs or pngs or printed photos of all of david’s paintings. it doesn’t have the rock i picked up hiking with my daughter or the cork i saved from the first fancy dinner my son made for me. it can’t hold my piano or the vintage typewriter 20 gave me or the bowls we love from ken and loida or the snuggly scarf jen gave me or the old torchiere lamp from my growing-up. it doesn’t have room for the old quilt or our favorite mountain mugs or our ukuleles or my guitars or our dvd favorite-movies-collection or the cardinal towels from my sister or the ‘i-found-you-you-found-me” painting of early k.dot-d.dot days.

the one thing about antique stores is that they give you perspective. lots of it. so many items in the world. so much stuff. you ponder why someone might have held onto a plastic flower arrangement in a plastic flower pot long enough that it became part of an estate that passed into an antique shoppe or how it is possible that there are so so so many 45 rpm records out there, collections of so many long-playing albums, and, someday, so many cds. even mine.

and then you know. it hits you like a spatula upside the head.

though none of that will fit in the pink backpack, were there to be any sort of emergency – and all we could grab is the backpack – we would not lose it all.

it’s love. all love.

*****

IT’S A LONG STORY ©️1997, 2000 kerri sherwood

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