Small cast party for Philadelphia, Here I Come! at Jeffery Roberts. Great conversation, some good wine. I’ve always been blessed with this cast in terms of conversation. Each member is their own specific individual but we share our experiences so readily. Plus we’re not adverse to the occasional lewd comment, which helps. I’ve developed a lot of interesting ideas around memory and it’s role through this process, and at some point I hope to delve into them a little more on here once the show ends tomorrow and I suddenly have more free time than usual.
I think that the more a person’s quality of life decreases, the more attached they become to physical objects. When I was a kid, and even now, I occasionally make a mental list of things that I would rescue, should the place where I’m living catch on fire. The amount fluctuates as things come and go from my life. But how much stuff is truthfully necessary?
Again, Grange’s question: What is valid?
As I continue to think about this, less and less stuff seems essential. I am indebted to countless things, but my possession of these things is in the end not entirely necessary. Knowledge and experience are the only things that one really needs to carry forward into the future. Contact and interaction with other people is of course of the utmost importance (I would not count my life to be of any quality if it weren’t for the people I am surrounded by) but books, music, art, tools, everything in the end is to be shared by each other.
Dr. Walter Stump recently bequeathed to me the complete Yale Shakespeare collection. He was emptying out his office, and on our last day of classes together offered them to me. I graciously accepted, but it was this gesture that I found very moving. For the past week he had opened up his office, which was about ten feet wide by twenty feet deep and completely filled with wall to wall bookcases, to students allowing them to select up to ten books each day from the stacks and I began to think about the underlying metaphor of this diaspora of literature. What do you really carry away from books? Knowledge. After a while the book is not necessary and should be given to someone else who can learn from it. The same for any other tool or instrument. Always for the public to use, always for the younger generations.
We seem so very far away from this idea. I recognize it as an ideal, but I believe that it may be something to work towards and apply on occasion. Gift giving for instance, take something you have but don’t use and give it to someone who may have use for it. Perhaps this is a bit communistic, but perhaps it’s something that should be considered.
How many things would you need to rescue? Truthfully. Living well, I think you’d find the answer is fairly close to zero.
Leave a Reply