The Body of Evidence

So this post is coming from a lot of different places, but the two sources that are easiest for you to access (and that I highly recommend) are the phenomenally creative and thought provoking novel The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt and the unprecedentedly engaging and entrancing podcast "Serial." These 2 projects came in to my life within a week of each other, just after Thanksgiving. They are...completely different. Like based on every superficial metric they have nothing in common, and I can't even imagine that the audience overlap is significant, but they do share this one important premise: Let's sit down and take everything, all the documents, and half-truths, and records, and opinions and articles and lay it out and see what story emerges, see which story is true. Which, when you think about it, is not so different than the way we live and edit our own lives. So as I've been devouring both of these projects and witnessing the accumulation of crap and subsequent purge that carries us from Christmas and through New Year's, I can't help but wonder...what kind of trace am I leaving? Am I leaving one? What do my objects say about me, and why does whatever they say seem to be so loud?

So. Here we are. Meditations on consumerism, capitalism, and the illusion of self-growth, in short,  the importance of stuff. How we accumulate it. How we let it go. How it becomes important. (Note: I will not answer all of these questions, at least not today. For today, the questions are enough.)

Monday night, actually on my way home from my book club discussion of The Blazing World, I lost my class ring. I have been wearing it on my left index finger, and even there it was a little loose. But I've been wearing it nearly every day since graduation, and especially during my year of underemployment it was a totem, a touchstone, a reminder that I had once been well, and with a little time, I could be well again. I have a, I guess you'd call it a tick, where I twist my ring by dragging my thumb through the space between my middle and pointer fingers. So as i was setting down my stuff on my desk and I was absently mangling my fingers, I quickly realized that my ring was gone.

My mind actually jumped almost immediately to Serial, because in one of the early episodes Sarah discusses our inability to recount details from our day. A pain stabbed my chest and I thought to myself, could I retrace my steps? could I remember exactly which bridges I had crossed and allys I had taken? My instinct was "nearly," but slowly pacing cobblestones in the dark of half midnight was not a proposition that particularly interested me, especially considering the futility of such an undertaking. I called the bar. I told my landlord. I tried to move on.

I tell this story mostly because I was surprised at how upset I was. Having so little going on right now I feel pretty centered, but losing that ring was like a stabbing. And maybe it was because I've been investing less in worldly possessions (emotionally and economically) that the loss of that petite scrap of metal hurt. Before I had cared for everything a little bit, and here I was left with a hole in my heart because I had transferred that interest to a very few objects, without losing any passion in the transfer. But, self criticism aside, everywhere I went and everything I read I was receiving the same message: Stuff matters!
Money might not buy happiness, but it does buy something, lots of things actually, and all those big and little things add up to something significant.

At the British Museum there is a piece entitled "Cradle to Grave" on display near the American tapestries by Susie Freeman, Dr. Liz Lee, and David Critchley, a trio otherwise known as Pharmacopoeia. It's a burlap quilt of sorts, really a blister pack that runs the length of a gallery, fashioned of a loose mesh and protected by a glass box. And upon closer inspection there are actually two streamers, side by side, loaded in a gridded and orderly fashion with pills. A man's and a woman's medical history. On display is not only every pill they've required over the course of their life, for reasons ranging from hay fever to birth control to pre-natal vitamins to heart attacks, but also personal trinkets, including family photos and 3rd place canoeing medals and etc etc. The idea being, there's more to wellness than the medicine, there's the personal stuff too. And to represent that sphere, there are actual objects, which on their own mean very little but hold the wight of very much.

In fact, it's not just this installation. The entire museum, all museums really, are glorified warehouses. We're looking at things, collections of objects that once meant so much that by extension they still meant something today. We don't save the coffins of every culture, partly because so many of them have disappeared or disintegrated, but also because sometimes we don't care. But the sarcophagi hanging out in the British Museum tell a different story. It was an empire with the means to preserve its own history, it was a rise and fall that the British were interested in, that they felt was somehow part of their legacy, and by means of archaeological work did actually become part of Britain's identity. And now tourists from the entire world can come to put finger prints on glass boxes that protect these incredibly old objects.

Now for contrast, cut to my room: desk with a Pisa-esque pile of folders and notebooks; 1-3 item receipts litter my desk; water glasses and half full mugs; a stack of one pound coins; paper flowers falling out of reused wine bottles. Swivel to my book shelf: piles of acquired souvenirs for family and friends, soaps shaped and scented like macrons, prints from boquanistas; books from expats who have already moved on to their next exotic locale; french children's books; my very own Larousse; and the notebooks, both completely empty and completely full, from courses finished and trips completed. And swivel, tight shot on that closet, undoubtedly the fewest pairs of shoes I've lived with since infancy, and I doubt that even as a newborn I had so few articles of clothing in my possession.

So here I am, amid my objects. No placquards or glass cases for tourists to mark with fingerprints. There are some bangles from Jaipur, and a postcard of Georgia O'Keefe on the back of a motor-cycle. There are colored pencils and a brand new pair of brown boots that I'm in love with. And all these things mean nothing. And everything. If the building burned down tonight in a fire, what would I miss? My journal. I could never replace that. But otherwise...

And yet, my sense of permanence is attributed almost fully to this...stuff. My very own piles of papers and projects in progress. That, and getting to fill out my french phone number and address on forms, that's when I feel like "wow, I actually live her. I have a life here." So it all means essentially nothing, but at the same time it means essentially everything. Is it my capitalist upbringing? Do communists feel less defined by their possessions, I wonder? Hard to say. But regardless of how important or impermanent my suitcase sized life is, it's here. And right now, it feels like my Larousse and my Petit Marseillais soap say everything you need to know about me. Oh, well that and my class ring, which in the end was found by a neighbor in the foyer and was graciously returned to my landlady who graciously returned it to an ecstatic American. So, maybe it's ok to be loosely defined by our possessions. To be honest, I don't hate the story my stuff is telling right now. That can't be a bad sign.

Sleepaway

Today I'm missing Camp, as I often do when I'm overwhelmed. So, to tide you over until my next real post, here is a speech I delivered at one of the final camp gatherings of the summer (and of my time there, 8 years as a camper and 5 years as staff). Whether or not you had the pleasure of going to camp, I hope you find something familiar in this ode that helps explain your relationship to the people and places that have helped you grow up and become all the things that you like about yourself. I introduced it as a love letter, and read verbatim from there:

Dear Camp,

Let’s start at the end.

As a Golan camper I felt the end of camper days drawing oppressively near. It was in the dining hall on the last day of camp. I was wearing my “I heart brussel sprouts” t-shirt and standing between Paige and Blaire and across from Shauna and our whole bunk was standing between the salad bar and our table singing at the top of our lungs. This was before ‘home away from home’ and our dining hall revelry usually consisted of build me up buttercup, wonderwall, and the circle game, so I can only assume that’s what we were singing. But I remember it perfectly otherwise. I remember that I stood there grinning ear to ear, overwhelmed by the magic of camp spirit and friendship and by the idea that if someone had offered postponing the rest of my life indefinitely to live in that single moment forever I would have done it in a heart beat. And I remember crying, tears streaming as I sang, because I knew that as much as I wished it so, that moment, like my summer, and like camp, would have to come to an end.

It wouldn’t be fair to say that every valuable experience I’ve had has been at camp. I skipped TAC 2 to spend 5 weeks working on an archeological dig in Israel. I carved out the middle three weeks of TAC 1 to volunteer for the National Parks of the Galapagos Islands. I decided to go to school 3,000 miles from home in Los Angeles and then decided to go even further, to an iconicly tumultuous European country to study abroad for a semester. All of these adventures helped me discover parts of myself that I never would have know if I hadn’t leapt off the edge of my comfort zone. But what I can say with absolute steadfast certainty is that it was my time with you, camp, that prepared me for each of these experiences.

Camp, you are the place that taught me how to be a good friend, how to be a good listener. You taught me to be adventurous, open, understanding, and accepting of difference. You affirmed and encouraged my independence while I built lifelong friendships with the girls around me. You taught me skills ranging from box stitch to shot put and taught that it was ok to try and fail as long as you sincerely tried. You taught me what it felt like to love and to be loved and be appreciated and be valued. You taught me the meaning of community. You taught me that home isn’t your return address it’s wherever there’s somewhere waiting for you to return. You taught me that if you love yourself everything else will fall into place. And that if you have the courage to try that the support will always follow. You taught me the moving power of friendship. Camp friendship is not just about having someone to laugh with or having someone to call, it’s about the unique experience of feeling truly connected to the world. Camp is the place you can never be alone. And for better or worse that means that camp is the one place and one experience where I have felt the most connected, the most comfortable, and the most loved.

I can’t say with certainty that I’ll never feel this way at any other point in time or with any other group of people, but I can say that what was once 10 for 2 (waiting ten months for 2 at camp) has evolved into 2 for 10 (spending 2 months at camp to give me the confidence, support, and energy I need to go out and live my life).

One day very soon this is going to evolve into a 13 for life situation. And by that I mean that one day soon I’m going to have to say goodbye, and the lessons I’ve learned over the 24 months I’ve been here are going to have to be enough. Camp, you have prepared me to succeed in every realm of life. You’ve taught me how to work hard, how to make the best of any situation, how to make new friends, keep old ones, and treat people well. You’ve taught me how to push myself and trust myself. And the time is fast approaching that I’ll have to put that preparation to good use.

I agree with the words of my camp bible, “Sleepaway”: Camp is more than a place, it’s a feeling. But in the same way that I don’t only feel loved on Valentine’s day or only feel full on Thanksgiving, I don’t only feel camp when I’m at camp. Whenever I feel myself getting closer to a new friend or taking a risk or challenging myself or saying the camp hamotzi at Friday night dinner with my family or singing along to wonderwall on the radio I feel you camp. I get goose bumps and I smile and my eyes burn and my stomach turns and my chest tightens because while everything reminds me of this summer splendor, nothing ever quite compares. You are always with me, but there is a constant nagging pain that I can’t always be with you.

I’m writing you this letter to thank you more than anything else. You have given me everything. I am certain of so few things in this world. I am certain that beauty can be found anywhere. I am certain that the universe is unpredictably chaotic. And I am certain that meaning in life comes from the people we share it with. I thank you and I love you for bringing meaning to my life. You won’t always be with me, but my camp friends will, and I know that whenever we’re together and we talk about our lives we will always return to the days we spent together here, under your canopy of trees, with your lake breeze, and we’ll smile and sigh at the magic that brought us together and made us into the women we will become. And for that magic, a million thank yous will never suffice.

Love, forever and always