I was just going through old stuff, getting the spring cleaning itch I guess and I discovered an old box of treasured keepsakes. The contents of the box was a sales associate tag from a first job, letters from close friends and matches from various bars. I don't like the fact that at one point this collection meant so much to me but now its nothing more than garbage only escaping the trash because it had been hidden under debris for so long. Here is my dilemma, when in life do collections of things lose their worth? For me, I believe its the dreams and aspirations that mean much to the younger person but as we get older other more important tangible aspects of our lives push the urge to collect the trivial things in our lives to small boxes we lose or tuck away.

I want to collect things again, things about now, about the places I go and the people and things I see. I think as children we are so excited about life and possibilities and experiences we tend to collect remnants, keeping a piece of our memories that we can go to again and relive. I used to photograph everything, I have photo albums filled with pix of my life from when I was ten to probably my early thirties. We shoot pictures, collect things, we are excited about our lives and the possibilities and somewhere along the line we lose that desire to maintain keepsakes. Time and people pass through so quickly and we don't have a chance to stop and capture moments never mind trinkets.

I think my turning point was the end of my marriage. I look at a garage almost like a beach where all the belongings of your life wash ashore. All of the objects in your life seem familiar but they tend to blend in with the dust and the memory becomes so obscure you lose the need to maintain your collection. Another aspect of your belongings is the move from one life to another, you tend to see your
collectables as more weight that you have to carry and less like the fond memory. Boxes of stuff flood into the garage, whatever you can carry gets gathered into your vehicle and by the time you get to the next destination all you know is the objects of memory are just clutter in your life.

So now I am in the process of cleaning the slate, discarding remnants of my life that don't lend themselves to my future. I want to start collecting small objects, I have seen artists that tack things up in their studio and my studio is filled with notes and unfinished works. I don't collect tactile stuff, stuff to inspire me to write or paint and I think I am missing a great aspect of the artistic experience. I know when the child becomes the adult, we lose much of what was important, much of what made us children we stop wasting time and interest for. Although I realize that every part in our lives, we gain and lose stuff, I feel the artist and the poet must keep the child that sees things as only a child can see alive somewhere. Something breaks in us, some piece of us that finds joy in insignificant things but I do believe this is where the artist lives and those pieces of youth must be preserved.

I have taken the artist way class and I know much of what the course is about is getting back to ourselves, getting to know ourselves again, I am eager to get back to the eye of an artist that is excited about sunsets and nature, the collector, the child that was passionate about life. I plan on starting a box today, I can hardly wait to see what piece of my life is the first to find its way into my box of treasures-I plan on keeping it small and simple so it never becomes the weight I can't carry but important and of substance that it doesn't get lost in the debris and thrown away during another one of my spring cleaning jags.

So what would you keep in a box of memories? What do you collect? What objects would fill your box and why? Would love if even just the followers might comment and explain their boxes that they would create.