guywithmonsters: (Obey Me)
Goreyboy ([personal profile] guywithmonsters) wrote2006-03-24 11:58 am

I Wish I knew How To Quit You

I 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
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.

[identity profile] johnjulio.livejournal.com 2006-03-24 06:16 pm (UTC)(link)
I have a total under standing for what you are talking about... I have odd little objects that I have had for years, and have moved them so many times I can not tell you...with the years of memory loss, I even have objects from that time that even though I have no Memory of I just cant seem to get rid off... Of course I have the clean out days (seems about twice a year) I even find myself throwing out some of my old work... which you would think I would have an attachment for ? as creatures artists are amoung the odd ones...But I do seem to like it that way...

Hope all is well by you...

[identity profile] goreyboy.livejournal.com 2006-03-25 10:12 pm (UTC)(link)
I love those "why do own this?" moments in unpacking. I'm sorry you guys couldn't come out to visit.

[identity profile] johnjulio.livejournal.com 2006-03-26 02:53 am (UTC)(link)
Me too, whould have been very cool, althought I feel I will be having more of those moments soon (speaking of unpacking) since we are moving to arizona in a month.. UG... I have to pack up all of it again and move it across state lines once again... lol at least this time its only a eight hour trip.... good luck with the tests next week...

[identity profile] vianegativa.livejournal.com 2006-03-24 07:21 pm (UTC)(link)
I dig those shoes. I tried to get a patent leather set of Oxfords with flames myself, but haven't seen them in a store since.

[identity profile] chernovog.livejournal.com 2006-03-24 07:34 pm (UTC)(link)
I developed an emotional interest in the success or failure of water droplets to make it from the bottom of the windshied to the top before the wipers (The Man) could get to them on a recent road trip. I know what you mean.

[identity profile] goreyboy.livejournal.com 2006-03-25 10:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Um....to thousands of reps YOU ARE THE MAN. ;-P