Contradiction

I have been on facebook more than I'd like to admit lately. Why, after all, do we need to be that in touch with friends? When we went to see "The Wrestler" and we were leaving we saw a friend who was first in line for the next show, smart phone in hand. "I knew you were here!" she said. And, indeed, I'd said I was off to see the movie a few hours before. This is what the kids have been doing for a while, starting with their voice calls "Where are you? Oh, I see you..." and ending up texting a continuous stream to one another and now, with Twitter and facebook, to everyone they know. I'm not sure I'm happy with it. I don't use the phone that much and I tend to pull back eventually from chat streams to write entire paragraphs for you to read (or ignore) at your leisure. I'm tantalized by the immediacy of things and by all these smart phones in the hands of my smart friends. But I resist as well. (I have a stupid phone. It does text messages but don't send me one. I don't know how to read it.) This is typical of my contradictory nature.

People (including FFP) have been writing notes on facebook with "Twenty-five random things about me." They are fascinating, but I haven't done one myself in spite of being "tagged." I don't take to tags or tagging others. If I inspire someone to write or comment, fine. Otherwise I'm on my own spouting nonsense, usually here. (Or, you know, one blog or the other.) These lists, though, are conduits of contradiction as people find themselves writing that they are one way but act another or desire some other path.

The above photo is a house in Old West Austin. Dramatically modern and different from its neighbors it would be patina-less but for the winter-stripped tree in the yard. I love patina, actually, but I find the house and its modern, sterile aesthetic appealing, too. We adopted a very modern look for our condo decoration albeit softened with art and books and some whimsical toys and collectibles. We left the concrete pillars and ceilings with their patina of seams, nail marks, wood grain from the forms. We used wood which has its endless swirls of grain but we have some sleek glass and chrome, too.

My personality is full of contradictions. I like to go places and see people but I'm shy and have spent a lot of effort over the years trying to get comfortable in social situations especially with strangers. Yeah, I'm the person who will invite fifty people to a party and then be exhausted, not by the effort to entertain them but by the effort to interact with them. (Of course, we won't be throwing parties for fifty in our new digs. Maybe twenty tops.)

I'm constantly yo-yoing between getting out among folks and retreating to my recluse mode.

I like to talk and I like to be listened to, but social situations still feel like work.

My love of patina extends to art where I'm a fan of abstract or the slightly fantastical realism (but nothing too fantastical, mythical or comic-like). I love collage and found object sculpture and assemblage and well, whatever you choose to call it. Mixed media. I love clean modern lines, glass and chrome. But take some paper ephemera, arrange it artistically and it grabs me. Rusty junk? Priceless.

I'm a bundle of contradiction. We all are, I guess. Collage appeals because we see ourselves in the complexity.

Bits and Pieces

Tuesday I read a review of Diana Athill's new book about growing old. Old age is much on my mind and, in my random reading, it happened that I was reading another book by Diana Athill. (This book, Stet, I bought in London at some point and it discusses her experience in the publishing industry. At some point it came to rest in FFP's car and, when I happen to be in his car, I read a few pages.)

I've been thinking about death and old age a lot lately. (Yeah, I know. I think about those a lot. See labels on right.)

But, anyway, life and death reminds me of a random collage, kind of like the wall above. We deal with this, decide that, go back and forth and there is all this random stuff and then whammy...this one certain end.

My dad has been going through a period of adjustment since his car wreck. He has been getting rides places and getting errands run by folks, including me. It's obviously disconcerting for him not to have a car, but with his vision problems driving at night is impossible and he already didn't like driving to certain places because of parking issues or traffic. He has had some interesting reactions to it all. He has threatened to call a taxi a few times, but has, in fact, not done so. He has called friends to bum rides. He declared that he was going to "go a month without a car." (Tomorrow that month is up.) He has declared different amounts he estimated that it cost him to own a car, how much to insure it per day, etc. And, in a possibly unrelated train of thought, he told me the other day that he was "going to live to 112." I could see myself, 80-odd years old, trying to see after him. He revised this downward a decade a few days later, only to reassert 112 yesterday. He manuevered his own giant recycling container back up the steep yard to his garage to "see if he could do it." I don't know what's going on with him except that giving up owning a car (or at least considering it) is a big step and he's adjusting to it, thinking through possibilities.

The review for the Diana Athill book quotes her on the car subject:

“Your car begins to represent life. You hobble towards it, you ease your unwieldy body laboriously into the driver’s seat — and lo! you are back to normal. Off you whiz just like everyone else, restored to freedom.”

But we never know when death will come. A few minutes ago I heard a plane had landed in the Hudson River but it now seems that everyone may have survived. They live. But to die another day.

Because death never gives up. To quote the book review above, quoting a Julian Barnes' book:

In his recent meditation on death, “Nothing to Be Frightened Of,” Julian Barnes wrote, “Artists are unreliable; whereas death never lets you down.” He added, “You would buy shares in death, if they were available.”

Yeah, death. A sure thing. It's life that's puzzling.

Junk as Art

Every quarter or so we get a postcard from the city announcing 'Large Item Pickup.' They promise to take lumber, furniture, appliances. They announce all kinds of rules and regulations. On the announced day piles appear at the curb. One of our neighbors had been accumulating odd items in one of their two driveways. Worrying that the house was becoming a hoarder house I was glad to see that a bunch of stuff is on the curb, hopefully waiting for the city trucks. (Which never arrive on the announced day, it sometimes is weeks after when they show up.) A piano stripped of its front and keys appeared among the neighbors stuff. It's amazing what accumulates and deteriorates in our lives. We have had some equally puzzling stuff hauled away from our place.

Oddly, since we are the downsizing royalty at the moment, we don't have anything on the curb. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have. I think there may be a few things in the storage shed that the city might pick up. But we have paid for hauling on a lot of stuff already. And nothing we could put out would look as forlorn and almost lovely as this old stripped piano in the rain.

Recycling? Good or Bad?

This picture is a detail of an image from my hard drive. I took the picture outside a small theater in Waterville, Maine in 2005. (See journal entry here.) I think this work of art, made from found objects, is a depiction of the town of Waterville.

I'm a great fan of found object art. I save old and useless things sometimes, pretending that I will turn them into a clever collage or sculpture. But, truthfully, I'm no artist. So this old junk just takes up space and taunts me.

Today, while cleaning out a cabinet that hadn't seen any attention in a decade or two, I came across some moldy old books that belonged to my mother and her siblings. One of my favorite local artists, in fact one of my favorite all-time collage artists, is Lance Letscher. His work often uses parts of books, old book covers, etc. (As the link shows.) So immediately I thought: I should give these to Lance Letscher. I've never met him, of course. I heard somewhere that he actually fishes around in the dumpsters behind places like Half Price Books to find material. Somehow I doubt that. Surely his friends are always giving him old books and such.

Our downsizing is this crazy effort to find just the right homes for things. Discarding books is very hard for me. It just seems wrong. I've done it. But it doesn't feel good. A lot of my technical books that are hopelessly out-of-date may actually end up in the landfill. But it's hard for me to be the one that tosses them.

This same cabinet has yielded up FFP's books from his childhood. He has had fun today remembering reading these. What will we do with these old, dusty, tattered children's books? Right now I haven't a clue.

As we go through this purging process a lot of people give us advice. About selling things on ebay or getting one of those estate sale people. Or who might like different things we have to give away. I've mentioned before how weary it makes me. I just have to keep saying "progress is being made." True the stack of moldy books is on the floor of my office. Along with other things awaiting their fate. I sometimes think back to a time when I was much younger. When I would have been so delighted to know someone who was like I am today...getting rid of all kinds of interesting 'stuff.' Fact is...maybe that's how I acquired many of these things! Mostly we get rid of things by taking them to the thrift store, putting them on Freecycle or giving them to a friend. We have sold a few things over the past few years. Giving things away is hard. Selling them doubly hard.

It's Always Something

People say "it's always something." My dad has a better saying. "There's always something to take the joy out of life."

I haven't taken a new picture lately. I'm lazy and, well, there have been those joy-sucking things.

This picture is from 2004. Austin has a art studio tour of the East Side. When we went in 2004 we visited the workshop of the guy who did our first found object musician sculpture in our backyard. (Barry George.) Inside and outside there were bits and pieces, he'd collected for his work. This pile of bits including a rusted out typewriter caught my eye.

Since last we spoke, I chased my Uncle's appetites. His surgery was canceled. He was admitted to the hospital to have an echo to look at what they suspected was a clot and was. This was disappointing because it made his surgery too dangerous. But the procedure would have been (to paraphrase the doctor) amazingly suitable to his heart problems. He had to return to his Dallas area home and try to work on a regimen to dissolve the clot. Before the gang left, though, they had to be fed. And restaurants were full of people going out before Valentine's Day. So I had to take my uncle of the appetites to the grocery store where deli fried chicken, ribs, fruit salad and ice cream were seleccted. The next day the relatives left. But within an hour or two there was a toilet flood at my dad's that soaked carpets and I got a call that my uncle left his hearing aids and they needed to be overnighted to him. I found them since I was standing there watching a water removal guy I hired suck water out of the carpet. I put them in a plastic Easter egg that was, for some reason, in my Dad's dining room with some napkin to cushion them and took them to my favorite mailing place, Beyond the Mailbox, to be overnighted.

I am thrilled for my uncle that he may get the clot dissolved, get back down here and get a procedure that will help his heart keep up with his appetite. But I'm not looking forward, honestly, to the time when they come back. I'm so selfish about my time. But as Dad says, there is always something to take the joy out of life, and it would be nice to have my uncle be able to exert himself without getting so breathless. I hope it works out. My aunt and uncle are very independent but they are getting older. And I worry about them. They maintain a home in Maine and an apartment in the Dallas area. It seems like more than they should do. And they don't have kids so it will be up to nieces and nephews to help. Which brings us to the situation FFP and I find ourselves in. We are childless. So we have to put ourselves in a situation where we can take care of ourselves or pay someone to do it. Our current dream is to spend our old age in a downtown condo where we can walk to stuff (you know if we can walk) and we don't have a yard and a roof to maintain and we have a concierge to bribe to do things. Meanwhile, though, we have these parental units in houses living independently (after a fashion). And other older relatives. I guess the good news is this: I don't have kids! If I did they would theoretically be grown and independent and helping me out. But with my luck they'd be the type who were moving home to 'find themselves' after consuming an expensive education.

Maybe I'm a cynic. I know I'm lucky. I'm retired. I have time for these things. But it is always. Something.

The Dilettante Collector

I read something the other day about a guy who collected comic books very assiduously for many years. They were stored in very optimum conditions for a long time, too. His family is now ready to sell them for millions although they have found out that some are missing. And because he obsessively made some small cryptic pencil marks on each and every one, his heirs were able to trace them and it was probably some contractors who were 'alone with the collection' who pilfered them. I can't find this story online just now or I would link to it. So what does that have to do me anyway?

Well, that's not the kind of collector I am. I don't stick to collecting anything with that kind of single-minded diligence. Unfortunately I am tempted to save things because they might be (pick one) useful / valuable / interesting later. And I might start collecting something...say cocktail shakers, globes, bendable posable figures, etc. and amass quite a few of them without a clue about what I should be saving or discarding, how to store them, etc. I feel like a lot of times I discard something just before it becomes valuable.

I have decided to seriously get rid of stuff. We've been cleaning out the garage. We've tossed a lot of stuff, given away a lot of stuff. We are trying not to worry if it will ever be valuable, useful, sentimental. A 10x10 climate-controlled storage unit in downtown Austin goes for $377 per month. We want to move downtown one day. I must get rid of stuff. I have too much stuff. If some of it is useful, I can never find it when I need it.

I will admit, however, that it is interesting to find a box in the garage containing my tax returns from before I married and the Christmas cards I got over a decade ago. As I looked through the latter, I choked up at notes written by people who have died. I wondered at a photo of someone that I simply don't recognize. Well, OK, she is vaguely familar. But I can't save all this stuff. It's going to be hard enough to decide what to do with boxes and boxes of bendable, posable figures. Every time I go through the stuff, less and less survives. Oh, I'm going to save some things all right. But I don't think I have to worry about any contractors stealing a million dollars worth of collectibles. And that's a good thing.

I don't think dabblers end up with million-dollar collections. I once wrote a poem about me and my attention span for organizing and doing. You can see it here but I'll also reprint it here in blogger-land where I seem to spend most of my time writing to you.

Dabbler, Babbler, Dilettante
Flitting about
Cannot stop.
Focus Free
Excuse me,
I must hop!