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January 05, 2004
hoarders and collectors, addendum
i was just thinking about the recent (?) formalization of "scrapbooking" as a hobby. i thought it was completely absurd until i saw a clean sweep ep. in which a woman basically just had a big bin of stuff that triggered particular memories for her. of course, in a bin they were doing her no good; she never looked at them, yet was dead set against giving any of it up. so the origanizer got her to commit to putting them into scrapbooks, so they'd be organized and easily enjoyed. (like all the work my grandfather did on family photo albums with captions, that told the story of our family history.)
the attachment to physical objects. the organizers are fond of saying, "this represents the memory. this isn't the memory." people buy that, but i don't; the physical object triggers the memory. that's why i like to keep certain things around that have no practical purpose.
you'll pry my europe journals out of my cold, dead hands, no matter how badly they're stored, or how infrequently i read them (for the record, they're stored very well right now, and i ran across them just this weekend.)
Posted by lisa at January 05, 2004 01:52 PM | TrackBack
Comments
HA! I totally agree with you about 'scrapbooking' - I've always thought it to be rather droll and kind of, i dunno, countrified. something that stay-at-home-moms and home-schoolers do. that and stamping. blech. BUT recently, I saw the niftiest thing that I wanna do. It was a tremendously huge corkboard with 20+ years worth of special photos pinned to it. I'm a hoarder of photos, can't bear to toss them away, yet i've no practical application for them. i also keep sentimental correspondence and greeting cards and think those things might be suitable for scrapbook type organization. who'da thunk?
how's the online ad working for ya? and the atkins, how you doin' with that? i'm gearing up to start my own atkins regime.
Posted by: joy on January 5, 2004 06:04 PM
oh, the stamping thing is completely beyond me. do you know there are actually entire STORES devoted to it? my stepfather's sister-in-law is big into the stamping crap. she has no sense of irony about it whatsoever. it's like.. this totally normal thing to do (to her). so weird.
i got a response to my ad from a guy who calls himself "humble_genius". um, yeah, whatever dude. i kind of want to write back and ask if that's supposed to be a joke, but i have a bad, bad feeling that it's not.
Posted by: lisa on January 5, 2004 10:27 PM
I totally agree with your feelings about the importance of memory triggers. I find that the memory is far more intense and enjoyable when I'm not expecting to have it. I cleaned out my bedroom closet this weekend and had lots and lots of flashbacks (and threw away things that had never produced one before...)
Posted by: rick! on January 6, 2004 12:04 PM
ok, so a) your comment won't post right away because i have to approve it first and b) you might get a server error but your comment probably posted anyway and c) previewing doesn't work so i've removed the preview button.