I am my things and my things are me
August 3, 2016 10:05 AM   Subscribe

"Single, childless, I’m all I’ve got: me – and the accumulated external markers of who I am, which are also narrative prompts for the ongoing story of my life. These stories connect me to the past, present, future, and live in nearly everything I own. " Lee Randall explores the anchoring of self-identity in possessions.

--via sperose
posted by drlith (21 comments total) 28 users marked this as a favorite
 
Tracks right back to this passage in Portrait of a Lady:
"When you've lived as long as I you'll see that every human being has his shell and that you must take the shell into account. By the shell I mean the whole envelope of circumstances. There's no such thing as an isolated man or woman; we're each of us made up of some cluster of appurtenances. What shall we call our 'self'? Where does it begin? where does it end? It overflows into everything that belongs to us—and then it flows back again. I know a large part of myself is in the clothes I choose to wear. I've a great respect for things! One's self—for other people—is one's expression of one's self; and one's house, one's furniture, one's garments, the books one reads, the company one keeps—these things are all expressive."

This was very metaphysical; not more so, however, than several observations Madame Merle had already made. Isabel was fond of metaphysics, but was unable to accompany her friend into this bold analysis of the human personality. "I don't agree with you. I think just the other way. I don't know whether I succeed in expressing myself, but I know that nothing else expresses me. Nothing that belongs to me is any measure of me; everything's on the contrary a limit, a barrier, and a perfectly arbitrary one. Certainly the clothes which, as you say, I choose to wear, don't express me; and heaven forbid they should!"
I understand why the author, apparently inching towards losing her home, feels especially protective of her possessions. But it is nonetheless striking, and rather sad, to me that a writer thinks of her self as more meaningfully embodied in a pile of Depression glass than in her body of work.
posted by praemunire at 10:50 AM on August 3, 2016 [14 favorites]


From NYMag.com: The Woman Who Lost Her Sense of ‘Mine’:
The trouble started after she came home from the hospital after being treated for her stroke. Suddenly, and for seemingly no reason, nothing in her home quite felt like hers. “When I looked at my belongings, I felt they were not mine,” she told her doctors. “As I opened my door, I looked at the painting on the wall, had a perfect recollection of it and knew it was mine. However, I did not feel a sense of belonging as before. Then, I realized I had the same feeling with the sofa, the living room’s furniture, the frames with family portraits, the flowers of the balcony … everything!”
posted by MonkeyToes at 11:00 AM on August 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


Oooh I really like OPs article and the article linked by MonkeyToes too.

I'm very very tied to my things. I love my things and their thingy-ness. I wrote my Ph.D. thesis on collections and collecting in/with literature.

Having said that, when I go through a depressive episode, everything feels like "not mine" and uncomfortable to look at. The comfort my "things" provide, when my sense of self is being attacked by depression, is no comfort at all. I don't know what that means yet.
posted by Dressed to Kill at 11:27 AM on August 3, 2016 [5 favorites]


I liked this. I don't feel as thing-bound as the author, maybe, but the extension of the self into the broader environment, the sometimes extremely fuzzy boundary between me and who I know / what I have / where I live, seems like it's a reality that gets lost in a lot of conversations about de-cluttering, ownership, memory, living space, etc.

I'm in the process of figuring out how to share a house with a partner again, and one of things I could do that would make this easiest is probably to haul a thousand pounds of miscellaneous crap to the dump, but there's an inherent tension between that and the parts of my self and my relationships that are built into all that stuff.
posted by brennen at 11:40 AM on August 3, 2016


This resonated a lot for me as I've just been through a process of moving/downsizing/"right-sizing" following the breakup of my marriage--the only span in my adult life I've lived in a single-family house. Even with all the moving I did prior, I still managed to hang onto a lot of meaningful objects from various periods, no doubt many of which were residing at my parents' house until I was able to settle into the marriage and house.

I think it's interesting to think about how the sense of identity that is embodied in material possessions generates a tension of simultaneous continuity and discontinuity of the self tied to the past and projected into the future. The feeling that you both are and no longer are the person who went those places, did those things, knew those people...and both can and likely will not achieve the aspirational self that forward-looking identity markers project.
posted by drlith at 11:42 AM on August 3, 2016 [4 favorites]


I've been thinking a lot about stuff. Roz Chast's graphic memoir, "Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?", struck a nerve with me after the period I spent dismantling my late MIL's home, and figuring out what to keep and what could go. Stuff gives me anxiety. Marc Allum, in Lee's essay, has it: "the ongoing insecurity of losing it all." Yes. Then I came across Tove Jansson's "The Fillyjonk Who Believed in Disasters," and it, too, spoke to me about what would happen if the stuff--the stuff given to me by others, the stuff meant for me to like, the stuff I hold onto because of past associations or future hopes--just disappeared. How much lighter would I be if the only stuff I had was right and useful to me now? What if I could let go, what if I could not try to control the future by laying in stuff? What if one day I woke up and didn't have a sense of "mine"? I am struggling with those ideas, and very much appreciate both this post and the comments. Thanks.
posted by MonkeyToes at 1:02 PM on August 3, 2016 [8 favorites]


it is nonetheless striking, and rather sad, to me that a writer thinks of her self as more meaningfully embodied in a pile of Depression glass than in her body of work.

Inevitable loss and dispersal is sad, the awareness that you can't keep all that Depression glass forever is sad, but I think it's a matter of taste to see sadness in a search for meaning in Depression glass over some body of work. The collection of Depression glass is a body of work: certainly the author put effort into the collection and the acquisition may have been as pleasant as anything else she's created. It's foolish to think that any acquisition is going to save you, but that doesn't make acquisition any less fun, or meaningful.
"For example, most women hang on to shoes they don’t – and can’t – wear."
I couldn't say if this was true, but I can say that I have more than a few old band t shirts hanging in my closet that I can't wear anymore.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:16 PM on August 3, 2016


I've always felt an affinity for my possessions. I chalked it up to being a military brat and moving every few years (also my house was always filled with interesting things). People and places come and go but you've still got all your own junk surrounding you.

Then Katrina wiped out my family home and all our possessions.

I've still got grimy, sometimes moldering, scraps and shards that we pulled out of the mud afterward that I still can't bring myself to toss because it was once part of a thing that I owned.
posted by Hal Mumkin at 1:44 PM on August 3, 2016 [4 favorites]


I think it's a matter of taste to see sadness in a search for meaning in Depression glass over some body of work

I don't think it's a matter of taste. Obviously, whatever the inherent/taste value of the collection (and I don't think Depression glass is vulgar or anything), she enjoyed collecting the stuff, and it now carries memories for her; I don't think it's junk, I don't think she should get rid of it. But to see less of your self in your writing, which you created yourself, in which you presumably aimed to inform or amuse or inspire people, to change the world, than in putting together a modest collection of glass made by someone else, which is kept privately in your home and will just be passed on to someone else on your death, with no mark left by you...that seems to me a pretty harsh judgment on the value of your own work. To see more of yourself in buying stuff made by others than in your own creation over a lifetime?
posted by praemunire at 1:48 PM on August 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


"For example, most women hang on to shoes they don’t – and can’t – wear."

Of all the things that struck me in this - being someone who's not only going to not be passing down any heirlooms to a next generation, but also aware that eventually I'll have to be the one to sort through my father's accumulated possessions when he's gone - I am very acutely aware of the dresserful of clothes I have that don't fit (or are out of fashion, or that have developed unmendable tears) that somehow I have not been able to bring myself to toss out.

There are a very few pieces I know I should hold on to, like my 20+ year-old shirt from the first Bay to Breakers I ran, but there's a lot of crap just sitting there as if to say, "Remember how I seemed like a confident purchase back then? Go ahead, tell yourself I'm trash now, I dare you."
posted by psoas at 2:01 PM on August 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


"The Fillyjonk Who Believed in Disasters" is great. Thanks, MonkeyToes.
posted by Don Pepino at 3:07 PM on August 3, 2016


But to see less of your self in your writing, which you created yourself, in which you presumably aimed to inform or amuse or inspire people, to change the world, [...] that seems to me a pretty harsh judgment on the value of your own work. To see more of yourself in buying stuff made by others than in your own creation over a lifetime?

Speaking as someone who makes a living, but not an art, from writing and writing-adjacent things, this attitude wasn't surprising to me at all. I do write things that are meant to inform and I do hope that they have their intended impact upon an audience. But they are not my ideas, they're not a reflection of me (except in the sense that I try to make them very well-done, a reflection of my work ethic and my skill). Almost anything that I curate, which is to say, buy with some intention and care, has much more of "me" in it than the chapter I'm currently writing.

The author of the piece may not have this same feeling about her writing but it sounds as though the world of writing has not treated her well; perhaps she has no desire to connect herself to it anymore.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 3:09 PM on August 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


Yeah, not very long ago I probably still had the idea that my public writing was in some key way a part of my identity. I suppose that some of it might be, but the more distant I get from a lot of it in time, the more I'm just kind of embarrassed by it. I've spent a few years now, too, as a paid writer of documentation and "content marketing", and that sure didn't do wonders for thinking of my written body of work as an expression of deep-down integral self or a lasting repository of value. In fact, it's kind of impossible to ignore the trivial ephemerality and futility of pretty much every kind of creative labor I've ever performed. I can't be too surprised by anyone else's lack of investment of selfhood in a given body of work.

(Of course, it's also probably true that there is no such thing as a deep-down integral self, let alone a lasting repository of value, all is vanity and a chasing after the wind, etc. I think I will go for a walk now.)
posted by brennen at 4:30 PM on August 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


This is the missing piece of minimalism for me. Identity through consumption is still identity, and I fully empathise with the 'I write for work, I collect for me'. The difference between eating for sustenance and food as love, really.

i visited a friend recently and he has a rather large collection of action figures around the place. Not full on collector stuff - they're out of their boxes and positioned in fights and for funny moments - but they are showing an aspect of him as much as his bookshelves do. For another friend I think it is his bookshelves, and it certainly is for my mother along with her cookware collection.

Me? I am very disassociated from my space, hell from my body, so there is no anchor of me in my house like that. There are glimpses with my photo wall, with the furniture I select, but nothing concrete like that.

It's a bothersome realisation to have, given the body disassociation too.
posted by geek anachronism at 4:49 PM on August 3, 2016


But it is nonetheless striking, and rather sad, to me that a writer thinks of her self as more meaningfully embodied in a pile of Depression glass than in her body of work.

Meh. I mean, I'm sure my great grandfather lay on his deathbed and thought "the 3,000 babies I delivered are my legacy" or "my daughter is my legacy." But none of the descendants of those 3,000 babies remember who delivered their forbearers. I certainly have no idea who any of them are. Almost nobody is left who remembers my grandmother, and I am the last of the line.

But this man born 140 years ago exists for me because I have the DR FREEMAN sign that hung outside his office in Garland, Texas. For most of us, our legacy isn't our work; it really is our stuff.
posted by DarlingBri at 4:50 PM on August 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


I was much more tied until things until I had to throw away/sell half my childhood things when a parent passed. Now, I'm attached to some books I us. That's about it.
posted by persona au gratin at 6:45 PM on August 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


A bit more: getting rid of all that was wrenching. But there was so.much.stuff. And I'm ok five years on. Sometimes I wonder where, say, that table is. But then I move on.
posted by persona au gratin at 6:49 PM on August 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


We have inflicted minimalism on ourselves because we are showing our house to sell it. It was sort of a painless purge because there was the idea that it was only temporary; we still have all that stuff somewhere. I do feel a bit lighter in that sense people describe when they throw a bunch of stuff away and of course the house is roomier, so that's nice. But I also have a vague, constant sense that I am forgetting something.

You know when you open an old box of memorabilia that you packed away long ago and memory floods back to you? I feel this temporary purge is the opposite...I've made a lot of self-knowledge and memories inaccessible to myself by hiding our tchotkes and the flotsam of every day life.

I think we are in a sort of possession limbo until we unpack things again or throw them away....
posted by Tandem Affinity at 7:44 PM on August 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think about this when shopping at places like Goodwill or the hospice charity shop...much of the goods came from people now gone. This vase, this ugly picture, this tchotke of this kind or another--they all belonged to someone who at some point loved them. But I have no idea what the meaning was and it is just an object to me. I try to remember that my objects, too, could end up at the charity shop when I am dead. Which doesn't mean I shouldn't love them...but both things are true.
posted by epanalepsis at 7:37 AM on August 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


Imho, it sounds kinda fucked up to identify yourself with physical things you own.

There are objects that I care about enough to protect by transporting them only in carry-on baggage, but mostly they consist of important documents, expensive electronics, electronics containing important data, and a few articles of clothing I particularly like. I would not identify much with those favored articles of clothing because I hardly ever wear them and they're more costume party gear.

I place higher value on my digital collections of files I've produced or organized, including archives of downloaded papers and books on math, cryptography, etc. I've never pruned my music collection well enough for it to represent me. And I frequently just delete downloaded movies after watching them because I do not rewatch movies.

I do kinda identify myself with stuff I've done, like that I lived in some place, or went to some event, which sounds almost as shallow as identifying with stuff you own. In any case, it's mostly ideas that represent me on a daily basis, but even there almost exclusively the ones that I'm working on wanting to do in the future. As once I've done them they get accessed less frequently.
posted by jeffburdges at 12:21 PM on August 4, 2016


I think that's the best article I've read on the subject. It really rang true.
posted by bongo_x at 10:14 AM on August 6, 2016


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