Doggy Stuff

I am overwhelmed by my things. Every nook and cranny is stuffed with stuff. My house is overflowing, brimming, teeming with heaps and piles and scads of stuff. The bookshelves in my office armoire host handmade candles that smell like cake; funky thumbtacks and glass paperweights; pictures of the skinny me, the young Marty, the baby Serena; books, pens, highlighters, CDs, paper; coconut hand cream in a stick.

Behind me are frog things: a ceramic one that sat in my grandmother’s plant, which my daughter played with and chipped, some Herend frogs with crowns and gold balls, a brass one with emerald eyes, bookends. There’s also a palmistry hand, a giant glass heart, more candles of red currant and cake and honeydew. At the top of my bookshelves, where I can’t reach them, are a leaded glass decanter and ten wine glasses, from which no one can drink because of the lead; a fancy teapot that never held tea; a child’s china tea service too small to be of import; and a wicker basket filled with stuff that wasn’t decorative enough to leave out to catch the dust before it falls upon an unoccupied flat surface.

I have bowls full of bones: skulls of deer and rodents, the hip of a dog, jaws and teeth and random innards, all picked clean and bleached white by the sun. I have a paper wasp’s nest, a honeycomb, a bird’s nest, a beehive, the shell of a turtle, and rocks; I have lots of rocks.

Among the several thousand books in my house, the utilitarian things, and the art that hangs on walls are more things: a punch that makes musical-note-shaped holes (but not very well), some Crazy Aaron’s Thinking Putty that I’ve been thinking of discarding, pine cones covered with glitter still out from Christmas, an ocarina from who knows where, and a pretty handmade book without so much as a jot or tiddle.

I didn’t buy all this junk. They are gifts from friends and mothers and daughters. They are relics from the dead and buried (or the dead and unburied, in the case of my bone collection), things with sentimental value, like a ceramic lady on a stick, who sat in my grandmother’s plant for my whole life and who sat in it still until last month, when I tossed the plant but salvaged the lady.

But I did buy a lot of it. Most recently, I bought giant steel switch plates with swirls and two ceramic figures that look like something out of a camp horror movie. We have enough of it, of course. I own at least eight pairs of bookends (because even the wall-to-wall bookcases in the dining room and attic can’t hold those several thousand books). I have enough masks—28 or so, from Italy and South Africa, China and Guam, Mexico, made by me or my friends, had for a song at a New York or Baltimore flea market; enough ceramic chatchkis that were irresistibly eerie.

Truth is, we need things. Some of us can live simply, but those non-capitalized nouns cut our steaks and clean our dishes and brush our teeth and hold our asses. We can live without many things, but we can’t live without a single thing. Things that aren’t tools— like cutlery and computers—comfort us. They rekindle memories of loved ones and joyous times. They capture beauty. They serve to make our inside world functional and beautiful and fragrant and pleasing, even if only to make up for some of the miseries found in the outside world.

No, never forget poverty and injustice. But show me someone who can live well without even a single object d’art, a single photograph or bauble or good luck charm—an ascetic life, perhaps—and I’ll show you someone who is denying more than material pleasure.

The first night of class, I hand my students a questionnaire that asks them to name one thing they might go into a burning house to retrieve. I long to read three-sentence paragraphs about baby shoes and photo albums and crucifixes. It’s the ones who tell me that things can be replaced, that only life is precious, whom I distrust the most.

Many people get it. They know I don’t expect them to burn, literally or figuratively, for a diamond ring or a Palm Pilot once people and pets are safe. I just want to know what objects hold mysterious sway over them, what they can cradle in their hands—like a special stone picked up from the ground at Dachau’s concentration camp, like their daughter’s first tooth, like the collar of their best dog—to have all of life come rushing back like some great big unstoppable wave.

Things have power. And it’s OK to let them have it. God and Jesus and Allah and Jehovah and love and trees and all those we deify will not condemn us for these simple things that we find precious.

What would you save? A dog’s whisker? Your son’s first rattle? The ashes of your grandmother? Would you, like so many of us, grab the pictures first?

While my favorite things are always changing, the ones that make me saddest—the collars* and pictures of my departed dog loves, Beowulf and Buddha—are my most priceless. This is A Doggy’s Life, after all.



*Don't read it unless you want to cry.

* * * * *

Thanks for some of my favorite things go to:

Flickr, because most of my precious memories can be retrieved from anywhere in the world.

Kingston, because I can practically carry my hard drive in my pocket.***

Mr. Clean, because with the Magic Eraser, I don't have to paint so often.

Dawn, because Oxi is the only thing that cleans buttercream icing out of piping bags.

Nikon, because my Coolpix 5200 takes a whacking and keeps on snapping.

Finally, thanks to target="_blank", which, when used after a link, opens a second window and keeps my readers where they belong. Use it, or lose them.