Just Me Being Me: Do You Have a Collection of Personal Keepsakes and Knickknacks?
What all these things really have in common, though, is the ability to take me back to a specific moment. I can hold each object in my hand and feel like I’m time traveling.
Just Me Being Me is literally just me being me, living my life outside my comfort zone when it happens as it happens. Since I’m a dedicated introvert, this doesn’t happen much, which makes it doubly interesting when it does.
In Edith L. Tiempo’s Bonsai, she writes:
“All that I love/ I fold over once/ And once again/ And keep in a box/ Or a slit in a hollow post/ Or in my shoe.”
This poem spoke to me on a spiritual level when I first came across it. I kept everything as a child: pop quizzes, Dairy Queen spoons, leaves and flower petals pressed in between pages of my books, and more. It was very difficult for me to scale down my box of keepsakes so I could bring it with me to the U.S. when we moved last year.
I love this piece about important mementos and unassuming objects people end up hiding away in some little corner of their physical spaces—I’ve dedicated a fair amount of my creative output to honoring it.
On Past Forays Into Contextual Creations
When I turned 30, I released an EP titled after the poem. Curiously, the music release coincided with my active performing years in the Philippines. There are so many memories associated with these songs. In a sense, the separate tracks are digital keepsakes that remind me of some of the happiest moments of my life.
Two years ago, I also started a website/project called All That I Love. It was supposed to be a repository for personal reviews and recommendations, but I never got it off the ground. My vision was for the website to attract contributors and comrades that would eventually turn into a small community of people excitedly sharing their thoughts on what they love with others.
Maybe I’ll get back to it someday, but for now, it’s hard enough to motivate myself. How could I expect to inspire others?
If anyone reading is interested in having their writing housed on ATIL, though, let me know! Being part of a writing community is something I really miss.
On Choosing Which Objects to Keep Safe
Some people love keeping photos. I have a few of them around, but most of what I have has been digitized and backed up safely in cloud storage.
The things I choose tend to be handwritten notes, odds and ends, and unlikely objects that somehow stuck around.
My two favorites are a pair of stones: one picked up somewhere in Pisay during my high school years, and one that came with the apartment we’re renting right now. (It was in a bowl along with the house keys!) I keep them on my desk because I like to hold one stone in each hand while I’m thinking.
I have my mother’s red fan, postcards from friends and family, dog Loaf’s first collar, old keychains… the list goes on and on.
What all these things really have in common, though, is the ability to take me back to a specific moment. I can hold each object in my hand and feel like I’m time traveling.
On Celebrating Love and Honoring Experience
Sometimes, going through my mementos feels like worship.
There is a solemnity and peace to it that reminds me of being in church. There is power attached to these objects because of what they mean to me. Subconsciously, I’ve created rituals involving them. I set some of them out in a small, altar-like spot on my desk—I pick keepsakes that relate to current struggles, too.
Right now: I light a candle by my two stones, a ring from my mother, a multitool knife from my father, a rosary from my grandmother, and a sticker from a recently passed dear friend.
What rituals, if any, have you formed around looking through your collection of knickknacks?
Photo by Christopher Flynn on Unsplash
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