Stuff

(page 4 of 5)

My brother has inherited, or learned, the maternal line of sentimentality. There is an entire room in our house that I think of as the museum to my brother's childhood. Toys, books, notes from schoolmates, awards from third grade, novelty items won at carnivals, Matchbook cars, all on display and kept in more or less the same arrangement as the day when he moved out of that room and into the room that had been my father's, before my parents divorced. It's eerie. The room looks like one of those rooms people keep after someone has died.

He is also a collector, which is different from a saver, although both manias often seem to inhabit the same person. Many of his collections date from his childhood. A vast collection of Star Wars toys and promotional paraphernalia, which is now, I begrudgingly admit, probably worth something. A large collection of novelty keyrings, which is probably not. A collection of art books, which I covet. A collection of obsolete video game cartridges, which I do not.

My sister, by the way, is also a collector: she collects clothes she never wears and CDs she never plays. But she lacks the fastidiousness of my brother. She is driven more by greed than obsession. It's the bulk that matters to her, not the individual items. And she lacks any sentimentality for objects at all, frequently purging her room of unwanted possessions with a ruthlessness that frightens my mother, who shakes her head and says, With her, it's easy come, easy go.

I admit that I have thus far presented myself as the only rational member of my family, the one who rises above stuff and its terrible allure. Well, it's true in some ways. I have learned from my family and seen what stuff can do. I've tried to save my family — admittedly in the face of great resentment — from being consumed by their own possessions. But nonetheless, I am a member of this family, and its odd genetic demons work in me, too. I possess a vast and unwieldy library, eclectic in a way that probably only reflects badly on my taste. I once read of an author who remarked that his appetite for the printed word was restrained only by the volume of his house. This is also true of me, and this is a possible reason why I am so anxious to purge the house of the things which are not books. I am irrationally proud of my books — many of which I have never read, and many more of which I never will — because I think they make me look smart. I have, as a female friend once remarked, book macho.

But I am not blind to the relation between my books and my family's terrible addiction to objects. I've tried to get rid of few — recently I pushed my entire Planet of the Apes series onto an unwilling friend. But I can't help but feel that books are, well, books. They represent learning, scholasticism, the monasteries of Europe, the Library of Alexandria, curling up by the fireplace, red leather chairs and glasses of port, an older way of life disappearing under a cultural avalanche of MTV videos and Sega games and proliferating cable channels. So I will feel no shame for my books, even though my family feels they belie my hypocrisy.

But anyway, it's not just the books. I collect other things, too. Useless and bizarre things, things which I find on the street and am compelled to bring home with me. This was a terrible problem when I lived in New York. My wretched little apartment on Avenue C was stuffed with rusted parts of cars, odd bits of discarded kitsch, mannequin body parts, gears and tools (I particularly like things made of metal), shiny bits of beach glass, plastic toys. My prized possession was an enormous rusted steel spring, six inches wide, a foot and a half long, weighing around eight or nine pounds. I have absolutely no idea what its function had once been—its only function in my apartment was to get in my way.

I left most of these things behind when I moved. I usually do, although I sometimes miss them. (I often pine for that giant spring. I know I'll never get another.) It doesn't matter though, because in our over-productive culture, I know I'll always find more.

When I lived with a girlfriend in Nyack I drove her crazy with this habit. “But what do you need that for?” she'd say, pointing to (for example) a sheaf of industrial blueprints I'd rescued from a dumpster and proudly held up for her approval. “I don't know,” I admitted. “I just thought you'd think it was cool.” Our living arrangement did not last long.

I don't know, to be honest, why I am driven to bring these things home. I think it is my way of shortcircuiting my genetic destiny: by collecting useless junk, I am under no obligation to keep it, although I often do for many years.

I have a friend who does the same thing, which I only discovered recently. I have known his family for years and they are not subject to same neuroses as my family. But they are very wealthy, and are obsessive in displaying their wealth. They are conspicuous consumers — yet another breed of acquisitiveness. Sax Fifth Avenue coats, luxury sedans, objets d'art, trips to Paris litter the family landscape. So collecting junk may be a kind of rebellion for him too. Just as I must collect objects without meaning, objects devoid of sentimental value, so my friend must collect objects without status, that is, objects devoid of material value.

As it happens, of course, these are the same sort of objects, the sort which can be found in alleys and garbage-bins.

My friend differs from me, though, in that he never throws out his junk—he crams it all into boxes. This is a problem, because my friend travels all over the world — he is a respected student of anthropology etc. with a sizable bank account to boot — amassing rubbish from the streets of Calcutta, Bangkok, Tokyo, London and Paris. All of which he crams into crates and boxes and ships back to his mother's home in New York at great expense. She doesn't know what it is in the boxes and he tells her they contain various items important to his important discipline but she is beginning to catch on. Lately, he told me, neccessity has forced him to begin storing boxes in other people's apartments, all over the world.