Personal Shopper

Dear J-

I went to bed late after downloading and installing what felt like a gazillion pieces of the Freespace open-source implementation (let’s see … the first game, its supplemental pack which was de rigeur in the early 2000s, some of the fan-made scenarios and the second game) and got up early-ish this morning thanks to an alarm I’d set so I could try to go dumpster diving before work. I see your confusion and raise you mine as well: as I was tossing out some trash last night I noticed someone had thrown out some photographs in vintage-y looking envelopes (everything will look vintage in time, but this had the sort of feel of old-time effort). So naturally I reached in and grabbed what I could (a small pile) and resolved to come back this morning to check for more.

It was not to be of course; I came back and found another foot or so of garbage had been spread on top and I wasn’t willing to take the time and risk to go dig through that. So I’m left with what I got already, which is some old black-and-whites of some family, what appears to be some impersonal personal correspondence and some negatives I haven’t had a chance to check (one set appears to be a few loose C-41s, another set looks like maybe 126 film in glassine holders). I think about what I let get away by not spending an extra minute or two (there was a movie on a thin reel and a fair pile of more photos and albums) and then I wonder what’s maybe wrong with me that I’d not only have grabbed this stuff in the first place but that I’d also make plans to go back for more.

I did look at one of the pictures before putting it away last night: dated 1938. Another card was written to a son and his wife and signed mother in the kind of formal stiltedness endemic to that time. Someone was the keeper of grandma’s stuff and the bother of keeping it became more than the value of holding on and I understand that very well, having moved three tons of stuff (STUFF) from one house, giving up maybe that same weight in trash and donations. But on the other hand I wonder what that’s worth: I read that experiences are more valuable than things (true: the money we spent to go watch Wicked at the Pantages left me with indelible memories whereas the equivalent amount spent on more technological windmills hasn’t helped lodge anything but a vague dissatisfaction and agony of purging several years later) and you’ve managed to throw out years of accumulated memories. And then there’s me, who has no connection other than living (probably) in the same apartment complex as a descendant, so that still doesn’t explain the why of why I hang on to this stuff.

theVet sometimes asks why I buy and follow old yearbooks; part of it is to see if I can score another Cheney 1992 but another part is just because I’m fascinated in forming a narrative of why you’d walk away from something so amazingly personal.

Mike