I got some emails back from you! I am so happy and grateful for them. I have gathered them up here and put them to use.
For newcomers to the column, I have been aiming to alternate between two ways of writing here. Some columns will be primarily first-person musings from my confused wayfinding amid what often seems like contradictions in our mainstream Canadian material culture.
Others will draw from stories people send to me at materialreculturing@yahoo.com. This gesture came from hearing all the stories people shared with me while I was artist in residence at Raven ReCentre, of the small but concrete actions they were building into their lives. I wanted to gather up these stories and share them, not let them go to waste.
This article draws on the latter. Keep sending them to me! I’m also envisioning articles based on interviews in the not-too-distant future.
Jozien emailed me to say the column on learning to walk encouraged her in her own walking practice. I ended that column with the question, what are you trying to learn? Jozien says she is trying to learn “to not buy anything plastic or in plastic [and] not bringing plastic home.”
That’s an ambitious goal!
I hope she’s signed up for Raven ReCentre’s plastic-free July challenge, “to use the delete button on the Internet, to keep learning from books and real life (instead of the Internet), to get rid of something daily.”
On that day, Jozien got rid of worn-out gloves that do not even have a partner (I somehow end up with left-handed gloves). She also made a box of gloves for the free-store, with perfectly good pairs. The final item on her list (which she observed was just an excerpt from an endless one) was learning to be kind! Yes. I’m trying to study in that school myself.
I admire Jozien’s capacity to get organized and get rid of things, partly because I’m sure it makes the space she already has much more readily usable, and that saves all kinds of things including heating capacity. I will admit it’s not my strong suit personally. And I think in this article I will actually champion, with limitations, the kind of sentimentality that would have us hang onto things rather than get something new.
I think when this article comes out, we will begin to see the signs that summer is not forever.
Perhaps you will have even spotted cotton on a fireweed stalk. Nothing (except plastic and “forever” chemicals I guess) lasts forever. What if this feeling of nostalgia, of sentimentality, is not a problem to solve, but something to enjoy?
I asked people on Artsnet about sentimentality and reducing waste. I asked, what if we just really enjoy keeping things for a long time. Do you have an often-mended shirt? What material things have you made a commitment to that you keep and tend rather than buying something new? Maybe it’s even ziploc bags and you have a great system for drying them. Maybe it’s your partner.
I got some great responses. Cate Innish sent a link to a song from her repertoire by Mary Chapin Carpenter called “This Shirt” found here: youtu.be/gClmaOb1aNI?si=LkAVsFBdBtT4M5W2
Cate finds it “beautiful, and very evocative, if perhaps sentimental.” Perhaps you’d like to listen to it as the soundtrack to this column.
Margaret Donnelly had an old t-shirt that was her Dad’s. “I saved it when we packed up the house after he died. I slept in it for years and years and years until it finally disintegrated. Even though I washed it often I still imagined that it smelled like my Dad. I wish I had kept more of his t-shirts.” Margaret, you’re breaking my heart. I have one of my Dad’s sweaters too, with lots of holes in it. How do we treat with kindness the parts of our hearts that express themselves this way? Do I really have to let that sweater go? I haven’t yet.
HKB sent a wonderful and thorough reflection that speaks to both the keeping and the letting go. I will quote them at length.
“When I know something well it speaks to me and then it becomes hard to not hear their voice. That’s when they become a thing that needs preserving. I do need to give myself limits and discern what is in that category, otherwise it becomes impossible to live. So… I give myself permission to speak with certain objects/places/rubbish/souls and I coach myself through not forming that connection to everything I encounter.”
It makes me think of reciprocity with beings who can’t talk the way humans do.
Of different ways of listening. Of how we tend to the world around us. And it makes me think of capacity. Of how much I can be in a relationship with it. Of who I must say “no” to in order to not be stretched too thin.
And then the process of letting go of something (usually for me it’s a pair of pants) that has been mended and mended and mended and simply isn’t holding together anymore. How do we send things off once it’s time for them to go?”
What a beautiful question. How will we let go of summer? How do we let go of the disintegrated shirt of Dad’s? I wonder how Margaret did it. I think Jozien’s idea of kindness has a role to play here.
What if we respect the fact that we store meaning in objects? What if this has a value that does not exchange easily with mere newness? What needs to happen before we chuck that shirt in the black bin? Please send me your stories of things you’re doing, changes you’re making, however small, play out amid your thoughts about waste, climate change and the environment, at materialreculturing@yahoo.com
