January 11, 2000

possesions

I'm still running the possession thing through my head. I think the relationship you have to stuff informs everything else. Your feeling of well-being, your relationships. Somehow I feel I've turned the corner. I'm looking at every artifact as just something that is passing through. Perserve your antiques, fight to save historic buildings, collect all the McDonald's toy premiums. And, one day, it won't matter one bit. Because , absent other decay and disappearance, the beholder (that's you) won't be here to see them.

Owning art is an odd thing. The part of a painting shown here isn't ours. I shot a digital photo of a painting done by my friend Nancy. The painting hangs in her house. She sometimes disparages this painting. But she does let it hang there. I think that no matter what else I do without, I would always enjoy art on the walls. We have too many prints, posters, paintings, sculptures and artifacts for our space. I've got a French adverstising poster and metal sign hanging at our adopted son John's house. I've got framed posters and prints hanging down the hallway near my office at work. I have no need of a bigger house. But I secretly wish there was room to collect more art.

How can she say all that, having just declared VP day (Victory over Possessions)? Because I understand. It's the experience of sitting in a well-decorated room, of enjoying an artist's statement. But there is a price. And a price beyond the purchase of the art.

More on this on subsequent days.

Today I worked. I had a good discussion with a colleague with similar responsiblities to mine but in another area. I worked on a presentation I'll give in May because the draft is due in February.

In the evening, I had eXtreme dog walking, dinner and newspapers. We walked to 40th. I mentioned to SuRu that if someone said, "Let's go to Waterloo Ice House and have a burger; let's walk." that we would think they were crazy. But we weren't far from there, walking along on the dark streets with our little red lights flashing. "But we couldn't do that," SuRu said, "Because we couldn't take the dogs." You can walk a lot of places around here. In January anyway. In August, it's miserable.

"The turning points of lives are not the great moments. The real crises are often concealed in occurrences so trivial in appearance that they pass onobserved."

William E. Woodward