THOUSAND WORDS
Sentimental ToolSAN FRANCISCO 18 February 2010 |
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There are two kinds of people: Keepers and Throwers. I’m a Keeper. I can’t throw anything away.
This epiphany came while editing a recent story that my editor had called, “unwieldy,” a polite way of saying, “Get to the bloody point.” His version of the piece was five-hundred words. My original was nearly two-thousand. His was better, I knew, but at what cost? I was heartbroken. Where were all the little side-musings, the digressions? What happened to the eager Chinese man who loved football? “You can’t just cut the Chinese guy,” I wrote in an email.
My editor liked my wit, but felt I was hindering my story with irrelevancies. I went to task, cutting into the piece, wincing with each sentence’s deletion. Why was this so hard for me? They’re just sentences. It reminded me of spring cleaning and I suddenly thought about how maybe it wasn’t only my stories that I was hindering.
***
I keep things. This sentimental hoarding has a rough formula: Recall memory of object, expound something’s usefulness, and warn against hasty tossing. A monologue I might give before a garage sale would sound like this:
“I wore this green disco-shirt to a seventh grade dance. It still fits. It’s a perfectly good shirt. That ceramic turtle was a gift from family friends who imported fine Peruvian art. It’s a perfectly good ceramic turtle. I still have Mr. Greenwood’s phone-number in that old phone. He was my boss from three years ago and, though we didn’t part on the best of terms, one day, I may take up real estate and want some advice. Best to keep it.”
Sometimes the sentiment goes much deeper. Since my dad died some years back, anything he’s touched, a tie, a tool, most anything, becomes an untossible relic. He was a lot like me, with drawers of old movies and a garage filled with a lifetime of history. Even things of his I don’t like or can’t use are kept. In cleaning my closet I can’t help but think, “Someday, I may need this wrench to know the exact level of torque on a bolt which I do not currently own. My father would be proud that I had that wrench on hand. It must be kept.” It’s as though I’m saving his history for him. It would be like throwing part of his memory away.
***
I was like this when I was young too. I always look back to one afternoon when I was very little sitting in a room filled with stuffed animals. I had dozens. Vividly, I remember doing a headcount. “Bam-Bam, Sheepy, Bernstein, Ducky…woah. Where’s Ducky?” I looked everywhere I could and finally cried for my mother to help me.
“Oh, that? I didn’t think you ever played with that one anymore and it was all tattered,” she said, gesturing towards the trash cans outside. (I should mention that she’s a ‘Thrower.’) I didn’t play with it anymore but, my god, how violated I felt. I ran out the side of the house, straight to the garbage cans and rescued Ducky, all the while feeling a mix of guilt and relief. Even without knowing the word ‘anthropomorphize,’ even at six, I knew the guilt I felt was because that stuffed duck had feelings of its very own, and I had betrayed them.
This “sentiment” was sometimes just a genuine revulsion to change. We used to own this vacation place out on Lake Mead. When I was twenty and my father had just died, my Aunt and Uncle bought the place. Afterwards, month after month, my mother gave me updates on the “improvements” my Aunt had made. “She changed the carpet,” my mother says casually one day.
“What!” I yell into the phone. “But that carpet was classic. Straight out of the 70’s. That carpet made the place. You can’t even buy that stuff anymore.”
Another time, “She pulled up all of the cactus out front.”
“Are you kidding me? You and I spent a week finding just the right colors. We planted it ourselves on that hot day in August. You remember that? We had to wear jeans in a hundred degree weather to avoid the needles. Who the hell doesn’t like cactus in front of their desert house!”
More recently, “She threw out all of the rocks by the patio.”
“Oh no. Oh Jesus, Mom! My whole childhood, snorkeling with my dad, hiking through the hills, finding the best, most beautiful rocks. She threw them out!?”
My mother reminds me that the lake house was their house now, theirs to make their own. The memories were mine, not my aunt’s. She tells me I would have to hold on to them inside. I know this, but it still stings when my mother tells me changes my aunt has made.
“Oh, you mean the bitch,” I say, correcting her.
***
The strength in my life and in my writing comes from the connections I make to my own history. It gives me a robust sense of personal identity, and identity gives one purpose and momentum. But there is a point when connections are less like pillars of support and more like the sticky tendrils of a web. Instead of shedding my outgrown skin, I’m wincing at the rip of a band-aid.
My writing is an analogy for my life and the struggle of letting go. Each piece is a journey. An idea becomes a paragraph, paragraphs pages. Eventually a story; then another. A life. Each sentence is a connection, a relic I create and collect as I find my way. I love them all, but not all of them are meant to be kept.
Strength comes from identity, and identity from connections, but the greatest strength may be knowing that connections can impede as often as they encourage.
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““Oh, you mean the bitch,” I say, correcting her.”
Hahaha. I also like the shedding skin metaphor. Nice, tight piece of work here. How heavily did you edit this one?
I am also a keeper when it comes to things. Any possible reason becomes good enough to keep anything. In fact, I’ve convinced myself to keep old clothes on the chance that I might need to wear them to a nostalgia party. Like, “I better not throw this away, because someday we’ll make fun of this kind of clothing and I’ll be able to wear it with irony.” Really?
But when it comes to writing, I’ll cut anything to make a project better. Sometimes the thing I like most about a piece is what is drowning it. I hate that. I don’t know why I can throw out my favorite scene but not my pair of maroon penny-loafers, but in any case sometimes you have to be brutal with your own work. Faulkner and darlings and such.
Also, great title.
Also, not sure why I felt the need to hyphenate penny loafers.
I’ll take the hyphen. They could, after all, have been another breed of loafer. Best to play it safe.
It was the piece that was the real bitch here. How heavily did I edit? Loads. This is probably the tenth or eleventh draft and I started it a couple of months ago. Originally, it went a much different direction. I included a long scene of conversation with a coworker that I had had the night of the epiphany. She was a “thrower” and I kept on asking her how it was she got on in the world and how she related to things if it was so easy for her to toss them out.
Trouble is, I was focusing too much on the questions, not enough on the answers. I cut the whole angle out and decided just to focus on how I relate to my own little issue.
Oh, and love the irony bit with clothing. I have three leather jackets which were fashionable for probably three months after Brad Pitt wore something like them in Fight Club. Now, I can’t toss them. They make me look like a complete douche, but besides thinking “maybe, one day,” I keep rationalizing that it is good, expensive leather, and can’t be tossed.
Sick, aren’t we?
Ah, yes. The Fight Club jacket. Hard to not want to be Brad Pitt after his badass turn in that film.
Eleven drafts, eh? Well, it definitely reads smoothly enough to have been eleven drafts. Maybe there should be some kind of function where we can include deleted bits like on DVDs. Outtakes, the director’s cut, that sort of thing. Although maybe that’s what Ben sort of did the other day.
That would be amazing.
I remember seeing some framed example of Joyce hanging in an English class. On the left was a first page draft, filled, with lines and notes and scribbles all over. You could read that one straight through. The right-hand page was maybe a third full, tight, beautiful but cryptic. It encouraged to see the transition.
Friends call me The Librarian, The Vault, The Archivist. They joke that at least I use my incredible powers of recall and my flare for the written word for good and not evil ends. They comment on stories I post online or recount over drinks, “I can’t believe you remember all this stuff! It’s wonderful!”
A short time ago, I wrote a sort of rebuttal to their statement that my memory is “so great”. It is, really, indicative of not letting go. I managed to break myself of the tendency to hoard/ store/ keep-this-object-forever, but the stories are something else.
It guts me to chop a favourite sentence as much as it once made me cry when a stuffed bear spent the night in the rain beneath the swings and my mother insisted it was destined for the curb on trash day. My brother and I have discussed identical guilt to yours re: Ducky, and on a recent visit to our parents’ house, we screamed and bolted to the basement when she announced “the guys” (our childhood name for our dozens of stuffed animals) were boxed up and headed for GoodWill.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about identity and storytelling, and the intricate workings of how I round up the best details and get them out. Your closing paragraph is a more articulate version of the question that’s been kicking around in my head. Thanks for this post, for everything it says.
Such a relief! I thought I was the only one who felt guilty when something was tossed. I mean, I can’t help it. Maybe it was that movie Brave Little Toaster from when I was a kid. It anthropomorphised absolutely everything. Lampy, Vacume, Chairy, Blanky. Suddenly everything had big eyes and a fear of the garbage dump.
And thanks for noticing that last paragraph. That was my tenth stab at closing it out, an indication that I was struggling more with reflection than style. Really glad it worked for you.
Question: Did they all make it to Goodwill? Did you save them, hide them, steal them back?
Ohhhh honey, those IKEA ads where the discarded lamp cries in the rain and the family reads in the glow of their new IKEA floorlamp? Cannot even watch it. No joke.
My brother and I were chatting about his son (who’s about 17 months old now) and he got all quiet and shy a moment then said, “I keep worrying about what if my son grows up to be one of those kids who doesn’t respect his toys. Like, what if he does stuff like rip the arm off his bear or drive over the stripey dog Marvin with his tricycle?”
Needless to say, the cardboard carton of The Guys remains safely stowed in an Ontario basement; Chicky, Joe, Other Joe, Joe With the Moustache, Tonka Truck Joe, Jeffy and Julie the Cabbagepatch Kids, Bald Guy, Seala, Joey et al still members of the extended clutter family.
May they lay in rest there peaceably until such a time as the next generation needs them.
i love the analogy between the difficulty of editing and throwing stuff out. while i’m a “thrower” - sometimes overenthusiastically (once i donated a skirt and shirt i actually had meant to keep) - i have a much harder time deleting lines i love, although i know they’re not relevant to the story.
have you seen Hoarders? that’ll make you throw stuff out right quick.
I haven’t seen above mentioned film. But I am trying to learn.
I have set up, for example, a rough agreement with my girlfriend that if she wants to throw anything away she must first hide it for a month, then check with me to see if I”ve noticed. I find this helps for all things but books, music, tools, documents, and hats which were once fashionable.
Throwers seem to get a real catharsis from tossing things; It’s entirely about purifying, I think. I wonder who would fare better on a desert island?
For our first stay in LA, my wife and I came with a moving truck, a bed, a couch, knickknacks (and we had thrown out so much already). When we left, we filled our Beetle and chucked the rest. It was hard, but we both felt a sense of liberation afterward.
“Connections can impede as often as they encourage” — especially when the connections are only expressed in the material world.
Throwing things away is amazing to me. I get upset on all sides, sentiment, practical value, future, value, etc. I’d have loved to watch you go through the decision making. Two or three piles, I imagine. Keep, maybe, toss, and then there’s always a fourth, unexpected, of a few things that need exploring right away, some old yearbook maybe, or a pair of pants that are dying to be worn around the house.
I always thought of myself as more of a “collector” than anything else: books by a particular author, albums by a specific band, etc. I’ll probably always have this tendancy, and if time is even remotely kind, when I’m old and cranky it’ll be one of those personality quirks people refer to as my “eccentricities.”
But hoo-boy did this change once I moved in with my now ex-girlfriend. She was, hands down, a hoarder, compulsively obtaining new items, and refusing to get rid of anything. She got it in her head that she wanted to take up sewing, went out and bought a new machine, patterns, cloth, needles….and then never touched them. That junk sat piled in a hall closet for three years, all of it unopened. And I remember once we had a huge fight, because all the new clothes she’d bought wouldn’t fit on her side of the closet, and she wanted to use part of mine. I flatly refused, telling her she’d just have to make room by getting rid of old stuff she didn’t wear anymore. I’m sure you can imagine how that went down.
During this period my habits started to change; I found myself turning into the protagonist from Neusea, overwhelmed to the point of revulsion by the sheer presence of so much stuff. When me moved into the last place we lived together, I got rid of about 1/3 of everything I owned….and man, it felt good. Even now that she’s gone and the apartment is much more spartan, I find myself, say, looking at the DVD rack and thinking, “Why do I have that? I don’t need it. I’ve only watched it once since I bought it. It’s just sitting there, taking up space.”
Really interesting addition, Matt,
I can relate to both sides of the sewing machine. Sometimes we keep things because they are the last vessel in which we can safely keep our ambitions. That machine was the embodiment of who she thought she ought to be, or something like that. Maybe I’m reaching. I know that when it comes to me, it’s books. I always tell people that my bookshelf is for the books I haven’t read or haven’t understood because most of the books I have read I’ve given away. Some day I’ll be the “owning a bar for dummies,” the “ten day MBA” or the “Aristotle Reader/Kant/Descartes, etc”.
Nah, it was more of a passing fancy that just happened to coincide with the first season of Project Runway. She had those pretty frequently, actually, but was more intense about that one than the others.
I tend to hang on to books longer than just about anything else, but last year I finally donated half of them to the library. They were all ones I’d read countless times, to the point of near-memorization, and I told myself that it was time someone else discovered just how awesome they were. Still hurt, though.
I’m curious which ones you kept (though I’m sure the list will be long)
I can relate to your struggle of what to cut in terms of writing. That’s why I avoid short stories. I’m a novelist by nature and at heart. Tangentials are simply too tempting.
Several years ago, I helped a family member clean out a closet. It was big enough to be a small bathroom. You couldn’t even walk into it. As we took stuff out, filling the hallway, I saw boxes that had been stashed in there when the family first moved to that house. Those boxes hadn’t been touched or opened in about 15 years. I had to “make her” go through them and throw out what she could. She confessed she was glad I prompted her to do that, right then.
Hours later, as she held on to things that really could have gone to Goodwill or the trash, I said: “It’s not the thing. It’s the MEMORY of the thing. Take a picture of it, then let it go. Photographs take up much less space and still help you remember.”
Ooh, how I cringe but can relate. We did something similar lately when my gal and I got a new place. There’s about three boxes of stuff with appropriately vague labels like “Misc, Extras,” and my favorite, “Flotsam.” Six months later, they’re still there. Now we have more boxes, the extra stuff her parents didn’t throw away when they move, along with seventeen original, handcrafted, genuine, shitty, Mexican art figurines.
It’s like Carlin said, “Why is other people’s shit, shit and our stuff is stuff?”
I feel like I’ve been saying this all week to people, but I think this is your best post. Holds together really well. Funny and moving at once. Well done.
I’m a thrower. I have to be, because the keeper potential is there, and wow is it strong.
Thanks so much, Greg. Yeah, I really tried to face some editing demons in this piece, and felt released when I realized I had gotten it down to qualify for the thousand word piece, a blessing akin to a heavyset jogger being asked if he’s been working out lately.
Keep strong and keep throwing. Your frugality with words keeps me honest, as my indulgence, I hope, keeps you entertained.
Thomas,
I’m having a really hard time with my “keeping” things. I have clothes I wore in High School. It’s that bad. I know I have to shake free the tendrils and all, I do, but it’s really against my nature.
You may have me beat. Maybe we should have a TNB “Keepers” party where we all wear our old outfits from seventh grade. Disco Shirt gets a second chance, baby!
Thomas,
Granted, I’ve always been a bit on the crazy side, but in seventh grade I was very proud of being 77 pounds. In eighth grade I did everything I could to get to 88, but I just couldn’t get there unless I wore heavy clothes and a coat and boots.
Those clothes will no longer fit me. I’m not 77 pounds anymore.
Reminds me of asserting to one and all that my 27th birthday (birthday is april 27th) would be the year of my life, untoppable, and the year my genius would be recognized. I am not searching through the original records to prove I was actually born on the 28th or 29th.
I’m so relieved to know that there is a whole new generation of oddballs out there to take up the banner!
Don’t sell yourself short. There will never be another Irene.
They had to break the mold, Thomas.
Too many flaws.
When Zara was over a little while back, I made a very special mix CD for us to play in the car. It was 3 songs - no more, no less.
Track 1: Woke Up This Mornin’: Alabama 3.
Track 2: Dead or Alive: Bon Jovi
Track 3: Carry On, My Wayward Son: Kansas.
She gave it a one out of three.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! How did this comment end up over here? Now I just look bizarre?
Damn it, sorry Thomas. Of course, this now raises the question - to delete this misplaced comment, or to keep it?
I, too, am terrible at murdering my darlings. The problem is, my darlings fight back.
Deletion is not an option. As my mother always used to say, “What Simon says is always right.” So this is now a post/discussion about mix CDs.
Speaking of which, it was a mix cd that brought me to my love of Jacque Brel. Did you know he was Flemish and not French?
I did not know that.
God, I’ve barely been out of bed an hour and this is shaping up to be an illuminative day already.
Such a great topic here, TW.
I’m a sentimental hoarder too, not so much of things but of thoughts. (Though I do have my own pile of rocks.) I literally forget nothing and as a result have actually had therapy in order to purge my memories. But see the problem with hoarding is not seeing the damage that can be done. Too many rocks and the patio is lost.
Which is why your moral rocks.
Nice piece.
You had me at Moral Rocks? Kidding.
Of course we’re all going to be curious about this literal recall of yours. You’ll pardon my play on ambiguity, but I’m going to imagine that while you literally forget nothing you do sometimes figuratively forget things-
I agree with everyone else in their praise of this piece. I also think the photo of the photo and the ties and books is a terrific still life.
There are aspects here that remind me of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, in which she writes of being unable to get ride of her deceased husband’s things. In general, it’s a first-rate book about grief, which isn’t, of course, your subject except in the tacit sense.
As for editors wanting to, well, edit, they sometimes go too far, believing that everything would be improved if reduced to basics. I dread to think of the fate of hefty literary masterpieces in their hands. There would be no heft — ever.
Cheers Duke,
And thanks so much for noticing the quality of the still life. I wont hesitate to mention that I took three or four shots and played with a number of arrangements (note: Blackberry phones will never quite get the look one wants).
Great post, Thomas.
Touching in all the right spots. Exactly right.
I am a keeper, too. Always have been. As a child, I hated chocolate and every Easter I would get these chocolate easter eggs and boxes of chocolates - I’d never eat them. But I kept them. I kept them just to look at, until the chocolate either melted or decomposed or until my mother would throw them away when I was conveniently out of the house.
I still do stock takes in my head and immediately notice if something has been tossed out or removed. I even save ribbons from presents.
I liked the picture of the ties too. Lovely.
That chocolate story makes me want to blow chunks!
Jesus Zara!! Just when I think I’m the weirdest of them all you keep raising the bar!!! Grr!
It is a little bit strange keeping chocolate just to look at..I’ve never really thought about how weird that is. Oh my god. I’m a weirdo.
But your our weirdo. And thanks for the heads up. Next time we have a dream journal discussion in your flat I’ll be sure to ask for the biscuits in lieu of the chocolates.
nice editing there tiger. it’s been quite the metamorphosis! x
I reckon you get credit for at least another two years. Dedications aplenty.
I’m in line with praise, too. Not just the descriptions, but the self-analysis. Nice.
I tend to keep small things that might come in handy some day, as did my father. I could do with less of it, but the problem is the positive reinforcement. There always comes the day when I really, really need a 5-pin XLR connector, female, and I remember that out in the garage . . . I have one. And then I find it, and it’s perfect.
One time I had a chimney sweep here (yeah, in Hilo some people have fireplaces) on a Sunday, and he busted a cotter pin on the damper. I don’t suppose there’s a cotter pin anywhere, he asked. I led him to the old man’s shop and there was half a drawer full, all sizes. Another reinforcement.
Thanks for the kind praise Don, and I’m totally with you on the “tools” section of keeping.
My father was a general contractor and kept a collection of useful things that spanned sixty years. You need the flywheel for a beta VHS player, check underneath the box of light-switches and next to the jar of galvanized 3/4 inch nails.
I figure tools (spare parts, etc) ought to be considered the same as our defense spending. You just can’t put a cap on the resources because you never know when you’re really going to need them.
Here’s to men and their garages, and to my own, growing collection of galvanized nails.
i used to be like you. now i live to throw things out. nothing makes me happier than taking a carload of treasured memories to goodwill and tossing them in that blue plastic dumpster. one less thing for people to throw away when i die, is what i always say to myself. plus, it always makes my house seem much happier. the past is very heavy when you’re carrying it all the time.
I’m getting a little bit better. Thank god for my frugality, because it gives me a strong sense of “I don’t need that,” to begin with. Without that, well, let’s just say that I am already familiar with the pricing schemes of Uhaul Storage.
Meanwhile, I can’t believe that anyone is altruistic enough to worry about folks having too many boxes to sort through upon death. In that regard, I only worry about the fulfilling of my dying wish, that every document I’ve ever written be discovered, retyped, and compiled into a tome of wisdom entitled, “What we should have been reading.”
” ‘You can’t just cut the Chinese guy,’ I wrote in an email.”
Such a funny line. And familiar, too!
I’m also a keeper. My mother, like yours, is a thrower. “It’s all up here,” she’ll say, tapping her head. But what good is that when I can’t see inside?
Yeah, no kidding, Marni. I want to know how that argument stands up to my rebuttal of, “but I wanted to share this with my kids someday.” Bam, nothing.
I once had a Taj Mahal rat cage. It was three stories tall and housed eight rats, with hammocks and wheels and feeding stations. It was four feet tall, two feet deep and four feet wide.
Once my rats died, I held on to it for about a year. It was a constant source of irritation between my wife and I. I finally set it out on the curb and someone took it away anonymously.
I kid you not. A week after this thing went away my sister in law gave me the two rats she owned because she could not keep them anymore. And there I was without my rat cage.
It is an inviolate law that the minute you throw anything away you will need it, really need it, two hours later.
And thus I am a keeper.
Now you know why I cannot toss my Star Trek: Next Generation full score record. Some day, I’ll be around a record player again, and wouldn’t you know how much I’ll want to finally christen it with a little TNG.