I've taken this collecting thing a bit far. I mean, to see my place, it's packed to the rafters, overflowing with stuff.
Stuff, as in, not especially valuable stuff, probably most of it worthless, but my stuff. Boxes and boxes and boxes of it. It's been over a year and I sitll haven't unpacked.
Most of it is worthless, junk, but sentimental. With everything there is associated a memory, the 1930's vintage Rolex Oyster Observatory, junk, but the memory, the surprise of finding it in a Value Village in the southeast of Calgary. The 50's 16mm film camera, the realizing of it's potential, the quick reframe of thought at a garage sale, from "What is it" to "I have to have it....". And so on and so forth. The dinosaur bones, small fragments, memories of Drumheller, walking in the badlands. The native artifacts, walking the local rivers at sunset. An antique ivory chess knight, memory of an antique shop in Greenich, that, the keys, the bones, coins, crystals, all serve to jog the imagination, archived, preserved inspiration, a moment of time, recent or long ago, held captive and displayed in a series of old wooden typeface drawers, themselves a souvenier.
On the shelf above my desk...2 Coins, Roman, (Maximus & Trajan), coin, chinese (15th century), pendant (chinese), cheap rock crystal skull 1" across, a lead soldier, 3 18th century keys (the rest on a shelf elsewhere), 2 native beads, many stones with holes through them picked and thought too neat to be discarded, 2 fossilized bison teeth (1 from Crowsnest Lake, the other picked along the Bow), a pine cone, many sea shells, a nautilus, postage stamp, lock, piece of amber with insects....
The objects, they're only the landmarks on the journey. The physical signposts.
Other people fill their houses with warm memories of Ikea and smooth talking salesmen. Well dusted kitchens, scrubbed floors and orderly bookshelved. Mine is packed with junk and memories.