My Story of Stuff

I have been looking around my house with a new lens. We're getting closer and closer to the move and I'm astounded by how many objects there are, and how dominated I feel by them.

Growing up we moved quite a few times, and I remember stuff getting "lost in the move" or broken by movers. I also remember how comforting it was to see the same stuff in a new place. I was the oldest, so I mostly got new stuff, but I got some hand-me-downs from older cousins. One set of grandparents was always trying to give us stuff... I think that grandma bought most of my clothes until I was old enough to know that Healthtex clothes are not hip... and to wonder why the word "Health" was in the brand name. In fact, I have two parcheesi sets from the 50's that that grandfather gave to me (and that I carried on a plane!) in my closet right now. When I visited them I took pictures of some of their stuff, the fruit bowl, and the weird statuettes that had been in the same places for my entire life. I heard often from my family that my other grandparents had gotten rid of so much of their good stuff. They didn't save anything for their children, like furniture, cars, trucks, a beach house. In fact that grandfather gave away my mother's chickens by accident... somebody asked about them, and he had no idea that his teenage daughter even HAD chickens, so he gave them away without asking. On the other hand, that grandmother was a knitter. Her gifts were afghans, pajamas, sweaters and scarves and slippers. I still have a sweater that she made for my mother. Different people, different times, different stuff.

When Z and I moved here, we had a huge truck and we drove a LOT of stuff here. I feel like I spend some time every day commenting on my stuff without actually picking any of it up and DOING anything about it. (Except books. Z and I have a box for keeping books and a box for getting rid of books. Every so often, one of us will pick up a book and ask the other one "Keep this one?" or "You don't want this one do you?" This is fun, and we've agreed completely so far.)

I've got clothes of course. I buy almost all of my clothes at the Goodwill, which is great; it's reusing, it's cheaper, it's around the corner, I'm not supporting sweatshops, or box stores. I feel really good about it. On the other hand, they tend to fall apart a little more quickly (because they're older) and I think I'm more likely to "settle" for clothes that don't quite fit or aren't just right, so they cycle back to the goodwill, and I tend to be discontent. I'm not crazy about boxing up tons of "Not-quite-right" clothes and paying to ship them across the country. In any case, I've had an annual clothing swap that's coming up in a couple of weeks, so that's one solution to that stuff.

I've got wedding gifts. Most of the beautiful special stuff that Zak and I will carry across the country again are wedding gifts. After our wedding, in Rhode Island, we drove a borrowed Eurovan across the country. We carefully packed our gifts into its small trunk. At one point we accidentally killed the battery by leaving the DVD player on (it was a SWEET Eurovan... thank you Mag) and had to jump it. We thought that the battery was in the back (it actually had two) so, while I fetched someone to help us, Z carefully removed our treasures and set them on a picnic table in an RV park. It felt really wonderful, looking at them all laid out completely out of context like that. The only gifts we won't cart back will be some of our beautiful dishes that have broken over the years. (I admit, we've been saving the pieces in a box, because Peter's Pots, where our dishes were made has a butter fingers day. If you bring in the pieces of a broken piece, you can replace it at a discount! I have no idea if the box of pottery shards will make it to Boston.)

I've got technology... I've got yarn... and books... and old papers and STUFF. I'm actually frozen when I think about how to move or sell or pack all this crap that's hemming me in. (As soon as I'm done with this blog, I've got to spend 15 minutes in the office trying to get a handle on the mountain of papers and yarn on and around my desk that has exiled me and the laptop to the living room.) Occasionally, I look beside my bed, or in the office and I think of a film I watched called Possessed by Martin Hampton. It's a documentary about four hoarders, and it's very startling and sharp and disturbing. The whole video is available if you follow that link, and it's excellent... like any mental illness, it's easy to see the same, if less dire, habits of thought and fear in anyone that are displayed in the film.

Once I met a guy and visited him on his boat where he lived and I was startled by how free and happy I imagined I could be on a boat. "Check it out." I thought. "This guy has only a little bit of crap. He basically could NAME every object that he owns. That's awesome." I imagined how fantastic I would feel if I got rid of all my stuff. Zak was away and I came home and looked around our house and found myself only attached to SOME of our stuff. I met a woman on retreat who lived on a boat. We talked about how free she felt with fewer possessions. I told her that I imagined that it would be hard to get rid of books. She blushed and told me about when her husband built them each a bookshelf, and announced that this was all they got. She asked for a second shelf, which he fit in someplace else, and then still ended up storing some books with her sister.

Recently I helped some dear friends pack up their apartment and in lifting all of their stuff, felt miraculously less and LESS attached to all the things I have with every trip up and down the steps. On the other hand, I've been thinking hard about buying another bike (my old one doesn't really fit me) and it's been very tempting to buy one that's brand new.

Sitting in the sun on our deck w/ Z, I looked lovingly at the prayer flags that I hung the first day we lived here, five years ago. They are so beautifully faded and destroyed, worn to transparent colorful bits with gossamer strings hanging from them. I asked Z... what should we do? Should we leave them (probably to be taken down and discarded by the landlord or the next tenants?) Should we take them down and bring them with us? That does'nt feel right at all. Maybe take them down and bury them in the yard, or do some other kind of ritual? We put off deciding. We are very accomplished at putting off deciding.

Yesterday, our training at work began by watching a video called The Story of Stuff. It's a brilliant 20 minute film describing how stuff is made, sold and then discarded. It discusses planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence in depth and where they entered our design world and how it's changed our relationship to stuff. Please take some time to watch it, it's really fantastic and compelling. It's a little hard, in that An Inconvenient Truth way, but that's because it asks us to look at a bigger picture, which I'm trying to do a little every day anyway. Anyway, I'm not entirely sure where The Story of Stuff has pushed me. (At work, a friend and I are going to gather a Zero-Waste Lunch discussion group of teachers and parents. This makes me feel a little like a super hero.) I'll have to keep mulling to discover exactly how I'll shift my own personal life from this film.

I'm sure that it'll definitely impact me as I consider how much stuff to keep, what to fix, what to get rid of, etc. Now I'll wash some stuff, and recycle some stuff, organize some stuff and try to change my relationship to other stuff. What do you think about your stuff?

"So you all know that what you've come to see is a nature documentary not a sports film."

I've been sick since Wednesday but on Saturday I dragged my ass with Z to the 36th Legislative District Caucus to attempt my civic duty as an Obama delegate. I was short of breath and coughing and spitting and generally disgusting and by the time we made it there I was certain that my next stop would be the emergency room. Because Z was an alternate we made sure that there were enough Obama alternates to cover me before he drove me to Capitol Hill to see the doctor. There were. We got in the car and I started wondering AGAIN...
Could I make it to the movie?

About three weeks ago I was walking to a bar when, through a window of a locked up coffee shop in the U District, I saw a poster with the face of Zizou and some dates. I imagined that I would forget to look it up, so I called Z and told him "It says Zidane, A 21st Century Portrait and April 4-6th." The next day we bought tickets. Until about an hour before the movie played I was still unsure about whether I could make it/stay awake/avoid coughing all over the person next to me. (The doctor gave me an albuterol inhaler to open up my bronchs, which was the only thing that assured me that I could, in fact, breathe through the whole show.) There's no telling when we'll get to see a screening of this incredible film again, and I'm so glad I went.

The quote in the title is from the Board member of the NW Film Forum who introduced the show. But I'm getting ahead of myself. As we walked up to the place (which is ordinarily pretty full up with folks who look like "film people" and other people dressed in black) there were people in Real Madrid jerseys and other football gear. It looked more like the George and Dragon on a Saturday morning than an arty film house. Everyone was on the phone telling the people that they were meeting that the show was sold out. I glowed smugly as we coasted into the Will Call line. The screening room was also filled with men, mostly, who looked unsettlingly sporty for the venue. I imagined they were almost hooligan-y. A group in the back kept trying to start a CLAP CLAP CLAP-CLAP-CLAP like we were at a stadium.

The story of the film is that it's an experiment and it's a different way to watch a football game. I think it attempts to give us some insight into what the difference between a player's perception of a game and a viewer's perception. Basically, the filmmakers shot one Real Madrid match (the usual cues are missing, and I don't know enough about la ligue to recognize the opponents) by only filming Zidane with 17 HD cameras. This means that we very rarely see the ball, and we simply watch all of the moments in the game that don't make it into the highlight reel. This is difficult to describe, particularly to anyone who doesn't watch soccer.

We (American soccer fans) often say that watching soccer takes a longer attention span, that the action is more continuous and therefore at a different pace than other spectator sports. This film shows that playing professional soccer takes a longer attention span still. We see only the world through Zidane's apparent reaction to it, through how it changes his game face. It was very Zen, very beautiful and like nothing I've seen. Absent are commentators, the pregame to remind you of which individuals are playing, the time clock, replays or other onscreen reminders to let you know the details of the game. I wasn't even certain of the score until I checked with Z on the way out!

Most of the film is growing obsessively familiar with the smallest details, Zidane's squint, his gait as he wanders from open place to open place on the field positioning constantly. Early on, there's a little bit of action... he gets the ball, burns through a defender or two and passes it on. Nobody in the sold out crowd made a sound (though we were clearly all football fans (the clapping guys started calling out ZIZOU! ZIZOU! when the lights went out) and appreciated the beauty and skill on the screen) that was it. We were collectively silent for the rest of the film. A crowd of people, who I imagine have no shame about yelling and berating screens anywhere else, watched our first football match in silence. I believe that if we'd cheered for that initial moment, we'd have made noise through the whole thing.

The sound of the film may account for that. We heard the players run on the turf like horse, heard Zidane's hand scrape his stubbly head to wipe off sweat, and more than anything heard the voices of the fans in the stands as a player does. There is a brilliant soundtrack by Mogwai that complements the sort of Nature Documenatry sounds of a "footballer in the wild". All in all, it was unlike anything I've ever seen, and I'm grateful I went.
sniff.
cough.

moving pictures

Last night I watched Once. Now, I don't follow the Oscars, so I had no idea that it had won one, or even been nominated. When this film came out, around a year ago, I think... Z was traveling... I tried to go see it with my friend Kyle. I'd read a review in the Stranger that it was the "best movie with music in since Hard Day's Night" or something. I couldn't find where it was playing because there are a million movies and reviews with the word "Once" in them, and because it was only one word, I was fucked. We looked and looked and finally discovered that we'd missed the movie, so we decided to go to the Cinema in the U district and see whatever came next. We saw The Lives of Others another incredible film from overseas. Now, when I search for the film it comes up right away! Thank you Oscar.

In any case Once is really perfect. It's very simple and spacious, and I found myself projecting my entire life onto the two lovely characters. It's sort of about inertia in some ways, and in most ways so am I. Since I've recently made a decision that is in every way anti-inertial, I was very sensitive to it all, and the music provided this main line to emotion, completely skipping whatever rational thoughts I could have about the story. I'm no good at movie reviews, but you should really check this one out.

Bizarrely, we saw Hot Fuzz the night before which makes for a great/hideous pairing. Hot Fuzz was incredibly smart and funny and dreadful, and reminded me that I still haven't seen Shaun of the Dead. I'll get right on that.

watching... the girls go by

This is brilliant.

I just watched two movies. One was a documentary about Spencer Tunick, a photographer who I can't help but admire even though I KNOW that he's a gimmick a one trick pony. The sad thing is I think I may have seen it before. The whole thing. I may or may not have rented and watched that whole lo-fi, silly, disorganized documentary about a subject I dig and NOT REMBERED it at all. Which is really too bad. It's called Naked States and it takes place in the late 90's before he was "famous" and he had a harder time encouraging people to pose nude for him. There are some great moments, like when he asks a young woman at the Sturgiss bike ralley to pose and she tells her dad, who overreacts in a stereotypically macho biker way... or all the moments when well-meaning rural people in diners and bookstores explain with a firm smile that they understand that of course HE does this sort of thing because he's from New York, but "People 'round here don't do that. 'cept up at the school, but you know, that's art." Actually I think I liked the movie quite a bit. Which is great because in all likelihood I'll rent it in a few years and get to enjoy it all over again for the first time.

Also woke up at 5 this A.M. to see the Women's world cup Semi Final. US vs Brazil. I will not comment in case anyone's going to watch a rebroadcast... oh, that's right they don't bother rebroadcasting this World Cup because it's just a bunch of CHICS!

Then after the naked movie, I watched Who's Life Is It Anyway, a movie with Richard Dreyfuss which is awesome... and (spoiler!) about a quadriplegic who wants to kill himself in the early 80's. I had NO idea about some aspects of hospital life during this time period, but this movie made me feel very grateful (I'm serious here) for Anita Hill and every other woman who spoke up about sexual harassment. In this film an orderly routinely CHASES a young nurse around small offices and elevators (she eventually goes out with him!) a patient loudly complements a doctor's breasts (sorry, a "woman doctor's breasts") and she then sort of blushes and gets all melty in a gross undoctory sketchy sketchy way.

Sexual politics aside, the right-to-die as ground-breaking brand new question was really sweet and innocent and clean. Everyone was examining and reexamining this question as thought it had just been thought up, and everyone walked around down hospital hallways and through rainstorms (or in the quad's case, laid there, looking straight ahead until a hot young nurse wandered by to be harassed... sorry.) People got angry, but NOBODY talked about God. It was refreshing, and jinkies but nothing beats a young Richard Dreyfuss... 'cept maybe a young Richard Dreyfuss in that hat from Jaws (which he TOTALLY wears in this movie for like a second while he can walk!) and of course young Dustin Hoffman.