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I Wish I knew How To Quit You
Mar. 24th, 2006 11:58 amI have an odd relationship with some objects. I develop intense attachments to them. Sometimes I'll borrow a tool and find myself offering to replace it if I can keep the one I borrowed.
When I was in college I found a chair on the side of the road and dragged it home with me. It was green vinyl pile in a style very similar to Archie Bunker's throne. The cushion was a different, heathered green that didn't actually fit the chair. That chair was ugly, but I felt weirdly bound to it the moment I saw it (I must have to justify carrying it half a mile). I had that chair for over a decade (though it was in storage while I lived in LA – I couldn't fit it in my car). It suffered through the claws of Hector, the Iguana, many parties and my first attempts at reupholstering (in a big yellow and blue plaid). Eventually even I couldn't ignore how uncomfortable it had become. The frame couldn't take my replacing the strings without being completely re-glued. After a month or so of pretending it would magically heal itself, I got rid of it. I loved that chair and still find myself missing it on occasion.
2 years old and 2 weeks old
I recently got replacements for my 2 year old sneakers. The outside seams are pretty much gone. The shoes seem to be held together by a few threads and luck but I keep putting the old ones on. I can't bring myself to throw them out. Ditto for the jeans, which I can't even wear around the house not that I've torn the crotch out of them for the second time.
I'm also enamored with my grandmother's china (which she hated and never used), a ratty flannel duvet cover which I bring out each winter and just put away, a paring knife with a bent point, a hammer which I keep in the studio so no one "borrows" it, two stings of tiny beads I "stole" from a ex and an Old Navy pea coat. None of these things has sentimental value to me in an explainable way but I have these weird attachments to them.
These don't include the weird attachments I have to certain art supplies or paraphernalia, which I don't find extraordinary. I know a few people with attachments to specific creative tools. I don't recall hearing anyone talk about a desperate attachment to other types of objects.
I'm not a hoarded of everything I ever owned. Once or twice a year I'm prone to purge my belongings. There are very few things safe from these editing sessions Only the necessary, the very sentimental and these weirdly beloved items are above expulsion
OK, time to get back to school work.
When I was in college I found a chair on the side of the road and dragged it home with me. It was green vinyl pile in a style very similar to Archie Bunker's throne. The cushion was a different, heathered green that didn't actually fit the chair. That chair was ugly, but I felt weirdly bound to it the moment I saw it (I must have to justify carrying it half a mile). I had that chair for over a decade (though it was in storage while I lived in LA – I couldn't fit it in my car). It suffered through the claws of Hector, the Iguana, many parties and my first attempts at reupholstering (in a big yellow and blue plaid). Eventually even I couldn't ignore how uncomfortable it had become. The frame couldn't take my replacing the strings without being completely re-glued. After a month or so of pretending it would magically heal itself, I got rid of it. I loved that chair and still find myself missing it on occasion.
2 years old and 2 weeks old
I recently got replacements for my 2 year old sneakers. The outside seams are pretty much gone. The shoes seem to be held together by a few threads and luck but I keep putting the old ones on. I can't bring myself to throw them out. Ditto for the jeans, which I can't even wear around the house not that I've torn the crotch out of them for the second time.
I'm also enamored with my grandmother's china (which she hated and never used), a ratty flannel duvet cover which I bring out each winter and just put away, a paring knife with a bent point, a hammer which I keep in the studio so no one "borrows" it, two stings of tiny beads I "stole" from a ex and an Old Navy pea coat. None of these things has sentimental value to me in an explainable way but I have these weird attachments to them.
These don't include the weird attachments I have to certain art supplies or paraphernalia, which I don't find extraordinary. I know a few people with attachments to specific creative tools. I don't recall hearing anyone talk about a desperate attachment to other types of objects.
I'm not a hoarded of everything I ever owned. Once or twice a year I'm prone to purge my belongings. There are very few things safe from these editing sessions Only the necessary, the very sentimental and these weirdly beloved items are above expulsion
OK, time to get back to school work.
