March 15, 2011

Cleveland

Listomania!

I’ve never been a very acquisitive person.  By that I mean I’ve never really trusted “stuff.”  Like any Westerner, I certainly own too many physical objects, but I think I’m less attached to them than most Americans are to theirs. 

Many years ago, when it was briefly hip, my mother owned a Krugerrand.  Remember those?  They were one-ounce gold coins from South Africa that people used like jewelry.  Hers was worn pendant-style around her neck.  She had owed it less than a year or two when it was stolen at a local festival.  It was one of the worst days of her life (and with my mother, that’s really saying something).  You would have thought she’d just had to make Sophie’s choice.  I watched her sit on a lawn chair in her front yard and cry for an entire day over it.  As I sat and watched her, dumbfounded, I made a silent vow to never be so attached to any physical object.  And I’ve done a pretty good job of it.

If you don’t believe me, just come look at my apartment.  Any stuff that’s there has accumulated carelessly through the march of time.  I regularly cull my belongings, getting rid of books, knickknacks, and anything else I can eliminate from my life.   I look forward to these regular purges.  The give me a sense of relief and detoxification.  You know, like a coffee enema.

Because of my position on stuff, I’ve never been a collector.  As a kid I sort of collected model ships, but that was mostly because my Dad got into the habit of bringing me home a new ship occasionally from his travels.  Also, this was before the instructive Krugerrand Incident.  By the time I was an adult I had successfully eschewed the whole concept of collecting. 

I’ve always considered collecting things expensive, time-consuming and without satisfying rewards.  I understand that collecting comes out of obsession, and I have no problem with that aspect of it (I think obsession is wildly underrated in our culture).  It just seems dumb to me.  I remember seeing a wall of unopened Star Wars action figures that took up an entire wall in a friend’s room. 

“Why don’t you open them?”

“Oh, you can’t open them!”

“Why not?”

“If you open one it dramatically devalues it.”

“Devalues it.”

“Yeah.”

“For when you sell it.”

“Yeah.”

“On eBay or something.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think you’ll ever sell your collection?”

“Oh, god, no, I love it too much.”

Like that.  I couldn’t figure it out.  I mean, what’s the point of having a Princess Leia and a Luke Skywalker doll if you can’t have fun taping them into offensive incestuous juxtapositions?

At least coins and stamps are interesting, have history and educational value.  Plus they don’t take up a whole wall of your house. 

Even more unfortunate, in my view, are the Accidental Collectors.  You know what I mean.  Another friend of mine made the mistake of telling people she liked owls.  Like when she was twelve or something.  So a couple of people give her owls as gifts.  Then people see her room, see the owls, and it becomes a thing.  It snowballs.  So now she’s 45 and has 734 owls in her house.  By now she’s long forgotten why she ever even said she liked the damn things.  But she’s stuck with them, like necklace of 734 lead beads dragging her neck down.

///

So I am not down with the collecting thing.

With one gigantic exception:

Lists.   love lists with a passion.  As a kid I actually bought with my own money several editions of The Book of Lists.  I adored it. 

At an early age I began making lists of my own.  I’d just sit down and idly write down all of the houses I’d lived in.  Or all the different schools I’d attended.  It was like a form of doodling for someone who had no artistic talent.

Eventually some of these lists became logs.  The logs began developing a life of their own.  I have logs of every book I’ve ever read.  Every role I’ve ever played.  Every movie I’ve ever seen.  Every video game I’ve ever completed.  Every board game I’ve ever played.

After a decade or two of being a hardcore list maker I finally realized what should have been obvious from the beginning:  List making is my form of collecting.  So it turns out I’m a collector after all.  But I think my style is superior to collecting tangible stuff.  It’s cheap and takes up virtually no space.  Plus it’s information, which can have value.  At least to me.

Favorite Casual Doodle Lists

• Books I’ve read by a favorite author
• Cities I’ve been to
• Cities I’ve taught in
• Games I’ve played of a particular type
• Movies I’ve seen by a favorite director

Naturally, a trip of this scope gets my list making impulse kicked into hyperdrive!