Stillness and Wisdom

I am lying in the park and the day is very still; the kind of day when there is no heat and there is no cool, nothing damp and nothing crisp. There is nothing particular on the brain, either, but a persistent urge to write tugs away at my subconscious. So I am here, with nothing to say except that I am here.

It is too warm for this fleece blanket spread out between my belly and the earth. I unfolded it here, in front of this rotting tree with its intertwining trunks all moss covered and hollow, because it is sufficiently near and far. I can lye out long and pretend to be alone, lulled by the low hum of traffic on the loop, the faint cries of laughter from children being pushed on swings with creaky rusted chains. I can stop and think only of myself. I am sentient, not reflective. The tops of my feet are sticky and cool against the grass and clover. My back aches from arching it. There are ants marching on a biologically determined journey across my calves.

Do people watch me? Are my shorts too short? Are microscopic organisms crawling in crevices of my computer that will later zap its jungle of microchip innards? The questions come to mind, but I don’t bother to consider the answers.

What do I look like when I have nothing on my mind? What expression is there on my face when I am laying under a rotting tree on a day that is just a day? I take pictures with the camera on my laptop. Is it narcissism when I begin attempting to perfect the look of feeling like I don’t look or feel like anything, and does it then cease to be nothing and turn in to something? Later I will kick myself for humoring existential nonsense.

I came here to do nothing, but feel pressed to do something, so I’ll tell a story.

***

Once upon a time there were two best friends, only children who loved one another like sisters. When they grew up tall one moved to a shiny city and the other started investing in postcards. Greetings and well wishes were exchanged through index cards boasting pretty pictures and postage stamps. There were highly anticipated visits. Coveted tokens and photographs. Then one day there weren’t any more. Mail got slow. Fizzle fizzle plop plop. One girl missed the other very badly, and I suspect the other was caught lonesome sometimes, too. But when things fall the way of the wind they seem untouchable. Nothing bad had happened, times were times and things were things. Better left alone.

Then one day they both girls learned that sometimes phone lines can be very still for a very long time without changing much of anything at all. One visited the other. Surprise! Long black hair, rosey cheeks, a honey sweet voice. Distance melted. They embraced in a familiar hug around the waist, they exchanged signature giggles. There was an evening of gin and tonics, three hours to catch up on the last three years. Upon departure they were all smiles and relief. “Love you, old gal!”

We didn’t attempt to explain the lacuna. We know the way of postcards far better than we know the way of the wind.

***

Now… What was I saying?

Riches

I have a gripping sense of sentimentality. Not the kind that is content to ruminate quietly over memories; the kind that assigns significance to the most insignificant token. There's a letter box on my bookshelf that contains every letter and postcard I have received in the last 12 years. Though its contents have waned in light of email and Facebook, its place on the shelf is comforting. I have items of clothing that are more akin to cheesecloth than cotton that I I just can't part with. My closet overfloweth with photographs. Literally every artifact that finds a way in to my life will be hard pressed to find a way back out.

If my attachment to stuff ended at heirlooms and nostalgia laden gifts this might not be a problem. However, I have an affinity for objects in general, and the older and stranger they come, the more firmly they reside in my heart.

I'm thankful that my material lusting ends at the dusty shelves of thrift stores and the well-manicured lawns of garage sales, otherwise I'd be flat broke (and probably a well-monied pompous jerk with too many cars and shiny things). Still, I bear the cross of a hoarder's soul. It doesn't take much foresight to imagine the ebb and flow of possessions that will shift through future closets, garages, shelves, and cabinets... All of it piling up at the yearning of my happy little trinket fingers.

Trinkets.

If you are left knowing only one thing about me, you should know that I adore a good trinket.

Today I made a couple of pairs of earrings out of some scrap fabric, and as I was cleaning up the mess of stray fibers, yarn, and earring parts, I took particular notice of how beautiful the pile was. That careless heap on the carpet summoned the most unconscious of smiles. My extra sharp and heavy duty fabric shears, colorful piles of cotton, unraveled yarn, an open sewing box.. It was hard to make myself clean it up. And so, I grabbed my camera, and began snapping away to document all my favorite trinkets.

A rack of thread hangs right above my sewing table. The colors, the spool sizes, the different types of spool... They're full of promise, they beckon me to make things... That's justification enough to keep them on display; objet d'art!

Oh boy does my jewelry ever scream for organization. Though I sometimes feel there must be a responsibility to keep them stored properly that is intrinsic to their charm and delicacy, I secretly love the messy pile on my dresser. Sometimes the way a pair of earrings mingles with a bracelet gives me an idea to combine the two that I never would have come up with otherwise! This photo is full of good trinkets... Just beyond the jewelry you might catch a peek of a pair of feet...

Those belong to one of my Margaret Keane big-eyed girls! Of all the trinkets I own, big-eyed girls are probably the only thing abundant and diverse enough to constitute a collection. I purchased my first one, an Eve painting, at the Nearly New Shop when I was 14. Thirteen years later, I'm still a sucker for doe eyes.

To the left of the little feet in the jewelry picture is an old old cigar box. My granddaddy smoked Dutch Masters for as long as anyone can remember, and he always saved the boxes for me. As a kid I had stacks of boxes containing my rubberband, acorn, and rock collections. Mother and I would take a walk together nearly every day, and by the time we rounded the block my pockets were already bulging with new finds. I probably would have worked on bird feather, leaf and flower petal collections as well, had it not been for my mother's reluctant ability to say, "Enough is enough."

Ok, so I was passing the full length mirror and I couldn't resist a self portrait. I was feelin' cute, what can I say? The trinkets to the left of the mirror belong to Sean; piles of records and CDs that are probably not catalogued for the same reason that my jewelry is one giant tangle of metal. Two peas in a pod, for sure.
It's a Where's Waldo of trinkets in this one.. The two portraits hanging above my thread in the background are of an African American boy and girl. They almost look Baptismal. I love the innocence of a child's portrait, and the kitschy way they were printed on wood blocks. My Nalgene bottle is on the sewing desk, one of ten or more peppered through our apartment, refrigerator, and cars. The year before we started dating, after a conversation in which I lamented the scarcity of old-school Nalgenes in the wake of the BPA hubbub, Sean tracked down five or six of the colorful water bottles for my birthday and sent them to me at the candy shop; pink, blue, yellow, green, and fuchsia all with contrasting lids. I probably shouldn't drink out of them, but I love them so. Sean's banjo and Amish hat are to my right, and both make me endlessly happy in their quiet representation of Appalachia. Finally, the cardboard deer head protruding from the wall is just like taxidermy (which I love, see below!!) but without the dead animal. Right? That's some Laura logic for ya.
Ok, so in light of my obsession with child portraits and big eyed girls, it's only natural that I love to snatch up bookends of child busts. These cats were acquired at an antique shop in Westpoint Kentucky on our way home from a hiking trip. The building is an old motel circa 1800s. The floors creak and the original wood bends under foot, and there's a spirit in that place that is palpable. If I could hoard old musty buildings, I'd do that too.
This will forever be my life's motto. Simplicity and love preached through a porcelain homage to the bluegrass, meant to be kept in the kitchen where togetherness happens. I plucked this from a general store in Cave City, which happens to be my favorite little town on Earth. Put plainly, Cave City is trinket Heaven nestled in a universe of oddity. God Bless.
Bird anything always constitutes a good trinket. The bird glasses at the tip top of that green cabinet were my mother's. We made root beer floats in them a lot, and sometimes she'd use one for her iced tea. But one bundle of birdware wasn't enough! When I saw the little china tea set at the Goss Ave. Antique Mall I had each piece mentally wrapped in newspaper and out the door before Sean could utter the words, "Uh oh..."

The green cabinet is a gem, and a beacon of self-restraint. It was in the window of the Seek and Find with its doors open and facing the street. What caught my eye? Retro decals of big-eyed farmer children, faded and worn across the front. I wanted it. I needed it. I bought it, and later forced myself to sand away the children, match the paint color, and re-do the doors in a crackle finish. Lastly, that painting on the wall was done by an eighty year old woman with Downs Syndrome. We acquired it on a Fat Friday Trolley Hop at the Mariposa Place. A photo of her smiling face, all animated with an endearing quality of enthusiasm, is all it took to will a twenty from my purse.

This little gnome is hiding in a bushy, vine-like plant that Sean received as a house warming gift in 2003. His mama gave it to him... :) It's fun to imagine such a fellow living in the thick of those leaves, even if this guy is inanimate.
I'm a garbage picker. When junk day comes around I spend wide-eyed hours scouring the alleys for a new treasure. The only way to properly embark on such a hunt is to crank up some good old timey country and imagine myself bouncing around in a rusty pickup truck. This box was sitting behind a house close to the candy shop, and pulled on my heartstrings as much as it did my trinket fingers. Someone saved that box, year after year, packing away the seasonal curtains with meticulous care. Though the box is brittle, yellowed, and torn, there was a person who couldn't dream of storing their curtains in anything different. I probably would have taken the box on that notion alone, and then I peeked inside...
An old candy box full of poker chips and an assortment of gauzy summer curtains, each tagged with a safety pinned note of which window it belonged to. The curtains smell musty, but sadly, also freshly laundered. Someone cared for these. It was my duty to give them a new home.
Izze isn't exacly a trinket, but I prize the pink on her nose and paw paws just as I do my mother's tattered high heels.
This whirlygig is the Holy Grail of trinkets. Last summer Sean and I passed through Lucama, NC on our way home from the Outer Banks. Our mission, to find Vollis Simpson, a 91 year old man who, over the course of twenty five years, has constructed the most magical farm of windmills and whirlygigs you could possibly imagine. The town of Lucama is literally as big as the Whirlygig Farm that calls it home; we drove on a one lane dirt road for three miles aptly named "Vollis Simpson Way," to reach this hidden wonderland. Marveling at spinning metal structures covered in shiny bicycle reflectors, it was impossible not to feel overwhelming gratitude for the folk art genius of people who create solely from the visions in their heads and the scraps in their garage. I was in love, like my soul found a home, mesmorized by the glistening universe overhead. A few minutes in to our visit a black pickup truck came sputtering up a hidden lane and in to the barn across the way. An old shriveled man in overalls carrying a banana and a bag of pork rinds got out, gave us one look, and said, "Weelllp. Looks like it's gonna rain. Y'all better come here and take a look at the rest of it." With gaping mouths and gracious hearts we tiptoed the lanes of his workshop, where hundreds of desktop whirlygigs and hairbrained sculptures piled on top of eachother in smiling, reflector laden wonderment. Vollis unveiled his entire world to us, complete strangers, without so much as a second thought. He sat in front of a Rube Goldberg-esque fan under a hot tin roof as rain danced in a song overhead, slowly chewing his banana, and gave us the genesis story of his farm. Mr. Simpson is a genius, a gentle man with a busy imagination. With the last seventy five dollars in my wallet I purchased a pint-sized whirlygig of my own, created from a family heirloomed antique wine goblet. I parted not only with an original piece of folk art, but with piece of Vollis' past. It was one of the most magical days of my entire life.
This squirrel friend was a white elephant gift at a Christmas party thrown by people I'd never met. Clearly, I came to the party white elephant-less, nothing to contribute to the exchange. Though I was slightly jealous of the jovial folk who were opening fake mustaches and clown-sized sunglasses, my trinket fingers managed to keep their cool... Until someone opened a gun totin' taxidermy squirrel!! My desire was murderous, I would have done anything to get that thing home and on my wall. Luckily, all I had to do was pout and look and it longingly, and Sean bartered it away from a very nice gal who was sympathetic to my hankerin'.
After spending weeks coveting a giant pufferfish lamp in the window of a local vintage store, Sean bestowed me with one of my own on my 25th birthday! I have a thing for taxidermy... which may or may not bode well for posthumous fate of our kitty and sugar glider.. ;)
The Kennedys are not creepy children, but their busts were too tempting to pass up for six bucks. I think I love the copper color as much as I love the ridiculousness of the object. Some extremely patriotic soul of the sixties, with very little money to buy truly presidential home decor, probably used these to bracket their volumes of Reader's Digest.

The antlers to the right of the Kennedys came from our recent trip out West. On the Utah/Nevada border we encountered a little table of trinkets; Navajo pottery, books, native jewelry, and a few sets of antlers. Everything was marked with a price, but there was no one to collect the fee. Instead, a coffee can beckoned souvenir money on the honor system. After dejected trips to countless roadside flea markets and general stores hocking antlers for sixty bucks a pair, I gladly dropped 8 dollars in the can for mine.
Peppers aren't really trinkets, either... But they're beautiful, and delicious, and I'm so proud of my busy orange bells!
This guy is the best Christmas present ever to grace the glowing underbelly of my tree. He's not just a somberly creepy, bowling pin shaped plush doll; he's a confidant, a cheerleader, a friend. He's My Therapy Buddy, and when you squeeze his foot he reminds you in the most soothing voice that, "Everything is going to be allllright." I was introduced to him several years ago on the show American Inventor. His creator is a total freak, and pitched MTB to the judges as an adult therapy tool. The arms are long and the hands velcro so that MTB can hug you. I'm not kidding. See for yourself.. My life is complete.

I am superstitious to the core, and fascinated by paranormal activity. As a child I spent countless hours channeling elusive spirits from the depths of my Milton Bradley ouija board. Two falls ago I got it in my head that I should start a ouija board collection. This one is handmade by a self-proclaimed Wiccan. It came with specific instructions for safely summoning lost souls and has been blessed by a warlock who sells his boards on Ebay. Am I as loony as he is for respecting his unabashed show of delusion? Totally nuts for wanting this thing in my home? I dunno, why don't you ask the undead?
Worry dolls chase away the blues and the bothersome. Whisper to them what pains you, tuck them under your pillow, and wake up to a brand new trouble-free day! I got my first set when I was on a fifth grade trip to San Antonio, TX to meet my ESL pen pal at a sister school. One night our pen pals took us to an authentic fiesta. Here is what I remember: the brattiest girl in our class was attacked by fire ants, there were a lot of drunk hombres in cowboy hats, and some guy was peddling worry dolls and friendship bracelets. One of each please.
We have two of these owl bells. They came from the gift shop of the Field Museum in Chicago. Couldn't pass 'em up!
The bathroom window makes me endlessly happy. It gets full natural sun all day long which looks so whimsical shinin' down on my plant and my birdies. The birds are in contrasting greens, little fairytale characters shaded by a jade bonsai. Green is my favorite color.
This pair of golden birds spoke to me from a bottom shelf in Unique Thrift. With each new abode they find a place to soar on the bathroom wall. We migrate together.
My soap dish may look a little cruddy, but it's one of the things I'd save first in a fire. This was Grandmommy's bathroom soap dish, and though it now cradles my face soap, every time I look at it I'm afforded an olfactory flashback to her pink bar of Dove.
Another Unique find, and another trinket that comes with my territory. I identify with some objects to the point that they're little extensions of my very person... This key is one of those things. I can't explain it, I just love it. I have it propped against our lovely bathroom window... Glass doesn't come any more perfect than the textured retro privacy glass.
Yellowed pages, inscriptions and library tags, ornate bindings, vintage children's illustrations... I get lost in antique book rooms. Lately I've been having fun with using old books to create new art! There are all kinds of wacky page folding techniques that yield really cool geometric designs, and once you've folded all the pages, the book stays flat and open. Just drill a couple of holes on either side of the binding, hang it by some twine, and viola! Nerdy chic. Books with lots of illustrations, hymnals, and ones written in other languages work really well for this because bits and pieces of the contents are visible when the pages fan out. A word of warning, though.. If you're prone to attachment, there is a delicate balance between choosing really great books and just so-so books for your page folding pleasure. The books below are a couple that I like so well I can't quite follow through with the transformation. The covers aren't all that snazzy, but the pages are begging to remain intact.

Maybe it was all those childhood years riding along the flea market with mother and grandmommy in my wagon, maybe it was weekend yard saling excursions with my mother and aunt, maybe an affinity for one man's junk is coded in to my DNA... My grandparents collected precious stones, jade orientals, mud men, and snuff bottles. My mother proudly displayed cat tea pots and vintage glass lady shoes. My aunt's home was decorated in hundreds of porcelain busts of sophisticated ladies with long eyelashes. Uncles Melvin loves Navajo and Native American art. My father collects coins and model trains. This was inescapable, I was born to delight in it all.