Love Your Objects

Years ago, I read a profile about a man, in an impoverished part of the world which could be anywhere, who owned a shovel. Because he had a shovel, he became the guy to call, in his community, when anything needed digging: Post holes, drainage ditches, shallow graves, deep graves, garbage pits, dirt-floor basements. If anybody was too frail, too tired, too busy or too rich to dig their own hole, he got the job.

His life was shaped by poverty in a poor place, and by owning one item of use: a shovel.

At the time, I used the article for a writing exercise: If your character has one object that defines his/her/their labor, what would it be? What is that tool, skill or even particular knowledge? Where did they get whatever they’re working with? Who else has access? How has it helped or hindered their existence? Students would ask if a printer was one object, when a character needed paper to work…they’d ask if a computer was a single thing, if it needed internet…we couldn’t pare our lists down swiftly. Still, the exercise made us think about characters, lives, objects and careers. It also reached toward consumerism and advantages, and how much shit we all own.

Most of us get up and lay eyes on thousands of things before breakfast. We don’t even register the endless objects of our lives. A book, The Organized Mind, looks at how much of a drain just seeing our own objects creates on our brainpower. If we’re lucky, and intentional, those objects are beautiful or out of sight.

In the nearly abandoned ruins of the resort town of Bombay Beach, I passed a house that looked like:

When I saw it, I thought of that article, the exercise. I have no idea if the person who made the sign is technically the owner. Capitalism falls apart in a land around the Salton Sea, for now.

Somebody saw an abandoned house in bad shape. They found a piece of wood, some paint. They made it into a thing, of sorts: a place for people to face their demons.

As a functional space, it’s made more real because it has hours! Like a BUSINESS! Ha! And with those words, it has a purpose!

And that word, “within.” Within…the house? Within oneself? Hm.

Really, it’s only an abandoned set of rooms, but with the sign, it’s everything. It’s a reason to stop, to look, to wonder who might go in after midnight, to wonder what might happen, to ask oneself, do I have…demons?

To shiver and shake it off and keep walking.

Sing a song, against the dust that kicks up at your heels.

What are the objects in your writing, in fiction or memoir, or even poetry….okay, this round I’ll add in poetry.

Objects?

How do they shape lives? How do they give way to stories?

Cheers,

M