Downsizing, The Subjournal

Part of downsizing is sorting stuff that has been sorted before. Including allegedly arty photographs of collage-like arrangements I took with my Polaroid 100 back in the early seventies. As I pondered what to do with these photos it occurred to me to scan them, creating more clutter on my computer, surely. And in this blog. But the photos are interesting and bring to mind other clutter, other ideas, other selves.

I thought of making a journal just about the downsizing effort. Instead I've just labeled entries here. (With 'downsizing' and 'stuff.') After all I'm contributing to two other blogs and there is a limit to the attention I should pay to blogging. When I should be sorting, tossing, deciding, consolidating, cataloging, arranging.

These little collages were arranged by me in an apartment in Dallas (well, Highland Park, actually). Before I moved to Austin (1975). I'd acquired an old type tray at a flea market, I think. I had also acquired some old wooden and iron type somewhere. The overgrown piece of okra? From my Dad's suburban gardening, I suspect. The bell peppers probably from the grocery store. (A favorite way to 'cook' for me then was to heat up some butter, thrown in chopped onions, bell peppers, mushrooms and sauté them and see what developed...maybe adding some browned meat and cans of corn, tomato sauce, whatever.) I didn't cook pasta that much but seem to have had some dried pasta on hand. Various ephemera I'd collected included wine corks, some ration coupons from World War II, Scrabble tiles, a rock that looked like a cameo, a ticket stub from the Deutsches Museum in Munich, a small ceramic turtle and a piece of coral. And a paper 'hanger' from a bottle of beer I bought on a train in some French-speaking part of Europe. It says "ne la jetez pas par la fenêtre...vous peurrirez blesser et même tuez quelq'un." Which, I believe says, given my limited French "don't throw it (feminine, la bouteille, the bottle) out the window...you might hurt or even kill someone."

It's interesting to think what happened to the things I owned at that moment. I only recently gave that Polaroid to a camera collector. I obviously saved the photos and the biodegradable things are gone. The coral? I don't have a clue. There are shells and natural things on a display in the house but no sign of that. I know that my mother-in-law tried to give the type tray away without my permission, it was retrieved and then, at some point I gave it away or sold it myself. I don't know if the type is still around. Mostly the stuff has flown. But the pictures remain. I remember taking them. Thinking them somewhat artistic, I guess, but not really being satisfied. I've always been intrigued by collage and wanted to create collages. Fact is, these photos turned up in a large box of stuff I'd saved only for the purpose of creating collages. Now, though, I've decided to save these photos in an 'archive' box. Sorting and sorting again. Only when I give stuff away or toss it in the trash is its fate sealed. I'm saving some of the stuff in this box with the idea that I'll give it to the arts magnet school for the kids to work into collages. But who knows? Maybe I'll throw the stuff away or sort it again!

If every piece of junk in this house gives me this much pause...I'll never finish downsizing.