I’ve been pinged!! Ahhhhh!!
Okay, so I’m supposed to come up with a list of things I can’t live without. Well, I have to admit that I find the timing of such a task to be rather….interesting. See, as many of you know, I lost all my worldly goods when I moved to Canada. Everything. Even my cats :(. It’s a long story, but basically I left all my goods, as well as my apartment, in the hands of a friend of mine whom I had known for 15 years and thought I could trust. He was to take over my lease and in exchange for the absolute coup of getting an amazing rent controlled Manhattan apartment, he was to watch my things until I reached a point in immigration where I could move them without paying duty. However, he instead sold/threw out everything and hightailed it to Los Angeles. I never found out what he did with my cats, something tells me I don’t want to know. I also never found out WHY he did what he did. All he had to do was explain the situation, whatever it was, and I would have figured something out.
Obviously, this was a complete blow to me, especially since I didn’t find out about it until way after the fact. He had kept his old cell number with the NYC area code so I thought he was still there, and there were times we spoke when he had already moved and pretended he was still living in my apartment.
This happened awhile ago now, but it’s been on my mind lately now that some of the anger and hurt over it has subsided somewhat. The whole experience has taught me a valuable lesson about the values placed (misplaced perhaps?) on material possessions. I don’t consider myself to be a superficial or materialistic person, but I realized that I do tend to get emotionally attached to my belongings. This probably has something to do with the fact that I don’t really have a tangible “personal history”. Therefore I think I had been trying to provide myself one, something I could actually touch, things I identify with and which could be passed on and shared with others. A sort of “defining my essence” by way of the things that I own that are displayed for all who know me. Things have sentimental meaning to me, maybe too much. They are physical reminders of memories, or even better, the energy of people and places that are gone or passed.
If I were asked to make this list five years ago it would probably be quite different than it is today. I will only include things that I currently own, either from acquiring them within the past five years or the few things that I managed to sneak across the border in various care packages or in my suitcase 
1. My wee little musicbox. It’s maybe 3 cms square, a simple embossed metal box with a small wind up key. It plays the theme from Love Story. I think it was originally meant to be on a keychain, but the little ring is long gone. I found it in a junk shop for pennies. It makes me really happy even though I tend to burst into tears when I play it. Music boxes are so wistful sounding, it just breaks my heart! But in a good way, of course.
2. A brass plaque with the word “Chapel” on it in raised letters. Wow, I wish I had a camera. One is coming relatively soon, so maybe I’ll go back in and put some pictures of these things back into this post. This is a plaque given to me by an old dear friend of mine, Bruce. There is a good chance Bruce may be dead, although I don’t know for certain. He was a terrible alcoholic and dropped out of my life around 1994. We used to be roommates though, before he got really bad, and in some ways, although we were just only and ever friends, he was kind of my first love. I know that doesn’t make sense, so just take my word for it, okay? He brought it home for me one day, I think he pried it off of a church somewhere. I found it in the basement a few months ago, which surprised me because I don’t remember bringing it here. In fact, this was one of the specific things I was sick over losing, so finding it buried in a box felt like winning the lottery that day.
3. Five pressed four leaf clovers. I found these in a cloth bound Victorian version of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales that I bought from Gryphon Bookshop within days of arriving in NYC. There was a love note written in the front of the book dated 1887 and various snips of romantic things written in the columns. It captured my imagination, so when I found the clovers inside as well, I arranged them in a frame in honor of these two long gone lovers. I like to think they had picked them together, maybe while picnicking somewhere beautiful in England, or maybe somewhere misty in Scotland.
4. A picture of my father from the late 40’s/early 50’s when he was a fireman in NYC. He’s standing outside the station in front of the truck with the rest of his ladder company. It’s just an amazing picture and I am so proud of him that he was so brave. His career as a fireman was a short lived one due to health problems, but I know it was the job he held most dear and nothing he did afterwards was ever his “career”. He was and will always be a fireman at heart.
5. My X-Men watch. The battery is dead, and my husband fux0rd the wristband, but I still treasure it. Back in the early 90’s there was a company that offered a (pricey!) subscription where you signed up and you would get a new X-Men watch every couple months. I think there were six in total, I don’t remember. Unfortunately, that big earthquake out in San Francisco put them out of business so I only ended up with the first one. It’s a replica of the the cover of X-Men #1, and it came in a little diecast model of the original Blackbird, which ironically was…purple.
Okay, I think five is enough, don’t you? Now this is the part where I get to ping people to do this too, eh? Okay…
I ping….
Neo!
and Tah!
I don’t know anyone else with a blog who hasn’t already been pinged, sorry.
I also received a copy of Sensual Knits, a book of knitting patterns that I’ve been coveting for awhile as well. The book is worth it for the sweater on the cover alone, but there are a few other things inside that I would like to make as well.
All in all, it was a lovely day!
