Hello there, expansive readership of mine. Today was a milder day in the winter of my discontent. Once I asked my shrink if there was a named neurosis, corresponding to such deep pessimism as I get rather bogged down in. She said no, which was disappointing. But today, for no particular reason, was a milder day.
Had to throw out a musty old mat I was using to catch the water under my dish drainer. The smell of it made me think about my tendency to accumulate various categories of old stuff. I cannot physically walk by old or antique cameras on display at a tag sale or in an antique store and I have a bunch of them. I've done a little shooting with them but not an extensive amount of it. I actually screw myself up quite often when shooting newly acquired old cameras in that I will experiment with some film/developer combination I hadn't tried before and screw up the negatives, which might have been ok If I could just bring myself to stick with normal film developing.
I also have rather too many old guns, and a lot of old books. Recently I picked up a 1920-30's Gretch pathfinder clarinet off of ebay. It's ok but needs new corks. It really stank with age when I first opened up the case, but the smell has now subsided.
I don't formally collect anything; I just accumulate stuff. I suppose if you reach the point that your residence smells like musty antique stuff you've carried it too far. Somebody's got to keep the estate auctioneers in business I suppose.
A long time ago I had a dream wherein I walked through this abandoned old new england town, the sort where you have several builings on the main street, the firehouse, city hall, church, and a red brick library. some had taken all the books out of the library and put them all outside. So I came across this wall or fence that was made of books stacked about four or five feet high, just sitting on the ground, they were all water damaged and moldy. I also dream about trees a lot, monstrous gigantic exciting ones, and the next day I come back and they've been cut down for the sake of someone's making money off the lumber or because bourgeoisie thinks they're a safety hazard and they're going to fall down.
I spose if i'm really to call myself a buddhist i should have no problem with letting old things pass away; everything changes and is impermanent, everything in the universe commingles without distinction, but still I feel badly about how indifferent a lot of people are about the beauty of things that are lost to the world sooner than they needed to be. There are people in this world, maybe even a significant fraction of the population, who would cut down the last giant sequioa if there was a dollar to be made doing so.
This thought process doesn't necessarily lead anywhere, but it's characteristic of me.
cheerio, and pip pip.
Had to throw out a musty old mat I was using to catch the water under my dish drainer. The smell of it made me think about my tendency to accumulate various categories of old stuff. I cannot physically walk by old or antique cameras on display at a tag sale or in an antique store and I have a bunch of them. I've done a little shooting with them but not an extensive amount of it. I actually screw myself up quite often when shooting newly acquired old cameras in that I will experiment with some film/developer combination I hadn't tried before and screw up the negatives, which might have been ok If I could just bring myself to stick with normal film developing.
I also have rather too many old guns, and a lot of old books. Recently I picked up a 1920-30's Gretch pathfinder clarinet off of ebay. It's ok but needs new corks. It really stank with age when I first opened up the case, but the smell has now subsided.
I don't formally collect anything; I just accumulate stuff. I suppose if you reach the point that your residence smells like musty antique stuff you've carried it too far. Somebody's got to keep the estate auctioneers in business I suppose.
A long time ago I had a dream wherein I walked through this abandoned old new england town, the sort where you have several builings on the main street, the firehouse, city hall, church, and a red brick library. some had taken all the books out of the library and put them all outside. So I came across this wall or fence that was made of books stacked about four or five feet high, just sitting on the ground, they were all water damaged and moldy. I also dream about trees a lot, monstrous gigantic exciting ones, and the next day I come back and they've been cut down for the sake of someone's making money off the lumber or because bourgeoisie thinks they're a safety hazard and they're going to fall down.
I spose if i'm really to call myself a buddhist i should have no problem with letting old things pass away; everything changes and is impermanent, everything in the universe commingles without distinction, but still I feel badly about how indifferent a lot of people are about the beauty of things that are lost to the world sooner than they needed to be. There are people in this world, maybe even a significant fraction of the population, who would cut down the last giant sequioa if there was a dollar to be made doing so.
This thought process doesn't necessarily lead anywhere, but it's characteristic of me.
cheerio, and pip pip.
artrob:
That dream is a good one. You could probably make it into a killer short film.