Things that I miss are a number of books, tools, instruments and recordings; and a number of other objects like the camera and the bicycle that were 'liberated' in broad daylight.
The stupidest losses were the gradual disappearance of my portfolio: evidence showing that I went through a period of discovery, and quality, which I believed would just be the start of what I'd achieve.
Anybody else lost anything they should have kept hold of?
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From MIT Press, OCTOBER:
This is a screenshot of my favourite issue of one of the periodicals that I found were a must-read during my oh-so-brilliant academic career.
In this one there is a fantastic/phantasmagoric essay by Susan Buck-Morss, called 'Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin's Artwork Essay Reconsidered'.
6 comments:
"Anybody else lost anything they should have kept hold of..."
My virginity....
I should be studying...
LOL! As I've already said, I'm going to miss you!
I think I have that issue of October - I hope - I remember saving THAT one one of the times I moved, and gave away other issues.
You got rid of a LOT of good stuff! I've kept most of those things. I wish more of my vinyl records had not melted
in the heat, one of the times I moved.
I have had two good bicycles [replaceable], and one good Oriental rug bought my my grandmother in Cairo [not replaceable, but at least we had it a long time], stolen.
My parents gave their Victorian and Edwardian etc. childrens' books away, whole sets of them, with amazing illustrations and print, when they retired and moved, and didn't even ask us: they wanted so badly to move into the 21st century that the assumed we would too! I am in mourning for the complete first editions of all of the Oz books!
What I would really like back, though:
some of the 15 or so years of wandering and exhaustion that resulted from my ill-fated, chance, and disastrous attempt to undergo psychotherapy.
Somehow I thought you might be an October reader!
For me, that issue was the one that helped me understand the importance of this type of essay, and I was hooked after that.
Have you come across an organisation called J.S.T.O.R. — they're stopping me get access to these articles online? It seems a shame to be proprietorial about such important writing just because I'm not a member of US Academe...but I guess I'm just jealous.
Thanks for your list LOST.
It is funny that we can just decide to discard objects, or deny events, that are a actually touchstones to a past that needs to be learned from: vinyl of an out-of-fashion genre, that 'dates'; books of questionable quality should realy be examples for us not to repeat; repeated re-learning is something we all have to do I think.
You had a grandmother in Cairo, I had a grandmother in Chile!
Quick note on JSTOR - yes - actually (technically) they're not preventing but making available - since otherwise only paper copies would exist. BUT you have to be logged in from a library which subscribes (or I suppose, subscribe yourself). From that point of view, one "likes" them because they are cheap enough for cheap libraries like mine to be able to subscribe.
Of course the politically correct thing would be for the journals to release e-copies of everything into the public domain, but this is of course not a capitalistic point of view ... ;-)
We moved so often when I was a child, and discarded so many things along the way, that there is almost nothing left of my childhood, no objects or even photos. I'm used to leaving things behind. But my mother did give me some letters of mine that she had saved when I was living abroad.
I mourn the huge collection of records I left in my mother's garage when I moved away from California so many years ago because I couldn't afford, at the time, to have them sent along with my books when I moved. Gone, gone.
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