end of an era
I got my new passport today. It's empty and light; a fresh, new era.
My old passport has 36 stamps from 14 cities: chicago, frankfurt, paris, nice, london, amsterdam, tokyo, hong kong, new york city, rome, melbourne, vancouver, budapest, and seattle. Each stamp marks a passage.
Sunday, I spent two hours sorting through a box of papers from high school and college. I wasn't able to throw away everything. For some reason, I needed to keep concrete evidence that I used to know calculus, that I programmed pascal in high school, and that I wrote a story in college that my teacher called, "unique and creative." Why? Who is it for?
My mom kept everything from my childhood: stories I had written, report cards, paintings. My grandmother kept everything from my mother's childhood. From time-to-time, at Christmas or a birthday, I will receive something that my mom or grandmother kept that I had given them. Sometimes I am passed a story that my mom wrote, a photo of my grandmother or her mother, or a favorite book of my great-grandfather's with an article about "living life to its fullest" that he clipped to the front cover. It's our own personal history. The women keep the archives. It ties us together.
Yesterday, I wondered about showing my boxes of papers to my children. I realized that most of my boxes are about the things I almost did: the stories I started but never completed, the research I did but never compiled into a story. Boring! From here on I will only save items related to what I have completed. My passport is an important item for that exhibit in my personal museum: here are the places I have been.
As curator of the Museum of Me, I need to prioritize the pieces in the collection to determine which to preserve and which to throw away based on their relevance to my history. I've always felt that I would use these pieces to write a story someday. And, I think by getting rid of the less relevant pieces I free up the space to focus on the important pieces.
I have a lot more sorting to do...as I continue to explore who I am. I am Anneke, and I am a pack rat. A pack rat with a purpose...although I wonder...if I threw everything away, would I be lighter? Able to move faster? More creative? Do I really need all of this stuff to remind me who I am?
My old passport has 36 stamps from 14 cities: chicago, frankfurt, paris, nice, london, amsterdam, tokyo, hong kong, new york city, rome, melbourne, vancouver, budapest, and seattle. Each stamp marks a passage.
Sunday, I spent two hours sorting through a box of papers from high school and college. I wasn't able to throw away everything. For some reason, I needed to keep concrete evidence that I used to know calculus, that I programmed pascal in high school, and that I wrote a story in college that my teacher called, "unique and creative." Why? Who is it for?
My mom kept everything from my childhood: stories I had written, report cards, paintings. My grandmother kept everything from my mother's childhood. From time-to-time, at Christmas or a birthday, I will receive something that my mom or grandmother kept that I had given them. Sometimes I am passed a story that my mom wrote, a photo of my grandmother or her mother, or a favorite book of my great-grandfather's with an article about "living life to its fullest" that he clipped to the front cover. It's our own personal history. The women keep the archives. It ties us together.
Yesterday, I wondered about showing my boxes of papers to my children. I realized that most of my boxes are about the things I almost did: the stories I started but never completed, the research I did but never compiled into a story. Boring! From here on I will only save items related to what I have completed. My passport is an important item for that exhibit in my personal museum: here are the places I have been.
As curator of the Museum of Me, I need to prioritize the pieces in the collection to determine which to preserve and which to throw away based on their relevance to my history. I've always felt that I would use these pieces to write a story someday. And, I think by getting rid of the less relevant pieces I free up the space to focus on the important pieces.
I have a lot more sorting to do...as I continue to explore who I am. I am Anneke, and I am a pack rat. A pack rat with a purpose...although I wonder...if I threw everything away, would I be lighter? Able to move faster? More creative? Do I really need all of this stuff to remind me who I am?
posted by sp1ral at
10:09 AM
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