I’ve had reason to think about my stuff recently. I mean my actual stuff, the objects I surround myself with. Partly this has been prompted by the fact I have to move and I gotta pack it all up, but partly also because of a boy I met, who was actually interested in my stuff, or, more accurately, the stories of my stuff.
And that, I finally figured out, is what I like about my stuff. I can point to each object and tell a story. And its not that I like to surround myself with material objects, but I like to wrap myself in the stories they tell, the things I can say about them, and what they say about me. I think thats a big motivation for what I do in my life, to create new stories. I do this purely for myself, so I’m always suprised when others find my stories interesting, as he did.
I gave him a wristband I made. "It’s a story," I told him. "You’ll go back to america, and you’ll wear it out somewhere, and someone will comment on it. And you’ll tell them this story about how you went to Australia, and you met this boy and even though you’d only known him a few hours, he gave you this wristband he’d made himself, just so you could tell this story."
Later, he drew a picture for me, inspired by the water stain on my ceiling. I said I’d put it on my wall, because I always put the art people make for me on my walls, and I’d be able to point to it and say to people, "I met this boy from america, and he came to my house, and I gave him a wristband I’d made to take back with him on his travels, and in return he drew me this picture."
Some art for some craft, and stories for both of us.