Object Impermanence

"Everything is temporary!"

If you read my last post, you’ll remember that I was quite recently on the run from the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles. I, like so many, am still displaced and cannot return to where I was living. This prolonged furlough is a peculiar and challenging chaos for obvious and not so obvious reasons, in a way that already has permanently changed the way I walk through the world. Unusual physical side effects have sprung up in its wake — my curl pattern has changed twice, I am exhibiting abnormally high rates of static electricity, a crop of silver hair sprang up overnight at my right temple.

I had to leave California under somewhat rushed circumstances, and in doing so was able to take very little with me (in the 2ish weeks I floated around friends’ houses and apartments, I accumulated a variety of temporary goods — more on that later). I honestly don’t remember the last time I have boarded a flight with only a carry-on (as a chronic over-packer and devotee of Southwest’s 2-bag freebie policy¹). When I arrived at my parents’ house at 3 in the morning, my stepdad asked me, genuine shock in his scraggly, Chicago voice, “Is that all you were able to grab from your house?”

Philosophy be damned, I am a lover of Things. I love Stuff — all kinds. Coats, books, creams, shoes, hand towels, good paper, perfume. God! Perfume. I love it. I am not much of an aesthete when it comes to environments — despite being a sincere appreciator of when other people’s spaces are decorated well, I could care less about the set decorations of my own environment, in an official capacity. I’ve moved more times than I can count, and have never had much use for wallpaper (despite, you guessed it, loving wallpaper). My environment has consistently been typified by simply being The Place Where My Stuff Is: my decor is the porcelain egg that has traveled with me to all of my homes, the stack of books on my nightstand, the hand painted towel I gave myself as a wrap gift. My objects shape my environment — not the other way around.

A little over a year ago, I was interviewed by two writers I deeply admire over on Circling. The formula behind their work is to interview artists and ask them to identify and speak about 10 different objects that inform and make possible their artistic life. It was a fascinating and useful exercise, and since that conversation I’ve been consistently kicking around how physical objects inform interior identity.

In the past 2 months, when I have had very little of My Own Stuff with me (I’m talking 2 pairs of pants, a coat, a bag of makeup, my mother’s cowboy boots, and a single pair of earrings — which, mystifyingly, are a pair I rarely wore BF [Before Fire]. I am a hoops girl. I grabbed the strangest pair of drop earrings on a whim. We contain multitudes!), I have become increasingly more aware of how much my stuff — my objects — make me feel like myself. And how, without them and in their indefinite hiatus, the borders of all the things I am come into greater focus.

A few years ago, I became intensely fixated on the idea of object permanence — aka, the understanding that things continue to exist even when you can’t see/hear/locate them. There is a prolonged disconnect happening for me that my stuff exists, in theory, right where I left it. Because my objects are my environment, and I am currently exiled from that environment, the objects are also in exile. They, for the intents and purposes of the present, might as well not exist.

I am shocked at how little I am thinking of said objects — of my favorite pair of brown pants that I didn’t think to bring, my collection of perfumes, a moisturizer my sister got me for Christmas, my favorite pajamas, the hoops. (The additional layer to this mental disconnect is that there was a prolonged period where we were not sure if we would be able to keep anything left in the house due to unknown levels of contamination. We will likely still have to throw some things away; but those day to day items, pending eventual decontamination, are ours to keep.) As I have carved my way through these, the most uncertain days of my life, I have more or less accepted the pared down terms.

This is not some great reserve of altruism. It’s hard to describe. It’s an understanding, maybe. It’s hearing a song your whole life and finally understanding what the lyrics mean.

It has been humbling and strange to be without my things, partially because I realize how much I subconsciously have been labelling them as My Life. But it’s also eye-opening, because, as I said, I don’t really miss them. I think of them fondly and am grateful they are somewhere out of sight, allegedly permanent. But there was a very real chance that their impermanence would be the coin’s head — that they could have burned to the ground, or been caught in the crossfire’s fallout. They are, in fact, impermanent and ultimately unprotectable.

I have had to rely on the things of others — Ellie’s silk weighted eye mask (invaluable for a chronically hyperactive sleeper), Annie’s brother’s t-shirt from Couer D’Alene, Rebecca’s swath of sheet masks, Hannah’s book of David Whyte’s poetry. The 7 or 8 batches of soup Barbara made for me when I tumbled in from the west; my stepfather’s slippers. The gift basket that arrived from one of my clients, full of things I would never buy for myself, tearfully opened while I watched Broadcast News. This suits me just fine; I’ve always loved swiping clothes from people I love. But before, it was an exercise in impishness, a romancing of my friends, a trying on of a slightly different life. Now, I need my friends’ things. Which, of course, really just means I need my friends.

In my regular life, I lose things all the time, regardless of their value (sentimental or financial). I have lost my cherished pair of sunglasses, one of my all time favorite objects, more times than I can count, and I fear I may have lost them for good this time somewhere in my chaotic transplant. And then, a few weeks after I arrived, someone gave me a gorgeous, much nicer pair of sunglasses. She was just getting rid of them; the shape didn’t suit her face. I still miss the old ones, and, frankly, pray for their resurfacing. Yet, in the lack, a surplus emerged, as illogically as so many things disappear. The ledger went even.

In the words of Cosmo Castorini, “Everything is temporary!” Objects, circumstances, entire cities — impermanent. Can you imagine walking the streets of Pompeii the day it was destroyed? Our hands, brief stewards examining the objects of our lives. I have not lost everything — but I came rather close. And it happened in a matter of minutes. And, even though the stuff of my life is allegedly the same, it is altogether different. So much fat has been trimmed; so much dross has been hacked away. My life, object-free. Like a tree barren of leaves at the end of winter — or the first days of spring.

Poetry is often written from this place: either a moment of utter paring down (grief, loss) or outrageous excess (falling in love, deep delight). Aside from this essay, I’ve only written a poem or two since all of this happened. I haven’t even written in my journal, the longest period of silence in my whole life. But I am reading poetry differently. I understand the breaths better. I see reasons in the line breakings. The space on the page itself holds all kinds of things; I can lately see them much better.

In college, I was part of a theater ensemble (spare me your judgment, it saved my life) called Workout that had a very specific vernacular, especially around games. These games had simple names — The Party Game, The Net Game, The Traveling Game — and frequently they were played by uttering a pretty simple phrase. During The Party Game, the way you played was by asking someone, Will you go to the party with me? To play The Traveling Game, you turned to the room and asked, Am I traveling alone? before turning back around and walking away without knowing who would follow. It was our way of developing a language made of symbols — not unlike writing poems. It was an incredible emotional shorthand, that could very quickly cut to things much deeper and harder to say. (I write a lot more about these games in greater depth here.) My friends and I have continued to use these various shorthands throughout adulthood, and have made up various new Workout games in life as they have presented themselves. The other day, I made up a Workout game all my own.

I was visiting my best friend and her family on their farm in the middle of nowhere. My mother and I arrived on a Saturday morning, and after a few hours of gabbing and eating and general delight at being in one another’s company, the afternoon elapsed into a natural lull. My mother and best friend — two women who very rarely are afforded moments of rest — fell asleep on either side of me on the couch while I edited something for one of my clients; her two daughters played in their room, periodically stealing out to the living room to check on us performatively — all stage whispers and hammed-up tiptoeing. Their perfect new puppy snoozed on my lap, and at one moment, I looked up, and the most arresting winter light was falling through the window. I thought to myself, “I would have missed this.” The subconscious thought that had occurred right before it was, “If I wasn’t in this mess.”

A similar moment occurred the following morning. I was alone in the kitchen, looking out the window with my coffee. One of the horses that lives on the farm across the street was clopping out for its morning coffee. In an utterly fluid motion, the horse fell to the ground, and rolled around in the snow several times, clearly giddy with delight, before just as fluidly finding its way back to its feet and prancing off beyond my line of sight, the residue of its snow bath shimmering in the morning light. I thought it again: “I would have missed this.”

In the days since, I find myself playing the game — I Would Have Missed This — retroactively. A snippet of a conversation revisits my mind with someone who broke my heart. I would have missed this. The memory of singing “Moon River” to my best friends’ daughters on a night I was supposed to be on set and got shafted. I would have missed this. Spending another best friend’s 30th birthday with her in her city while a fire ravaged mine. I would have missed this.

There’s a wonderful line by Mary Oliver in her poem “The Gardener”: Have I endured loneliness with grace? I am trying to bear this chaos and disappointment I currently find myself in gracefully. It doesn’t necessarily make it better, but trying to cultivate a graceful response to disappointment, sorrow, loneliness at least makes it more bearable. It turns the blank margins of my mind into line breaks.

It’s the same with love. Every time I’ve lost it (the number grows ever higher), after I wail and threaten to lose hope, I repeatedly remember that line John Steinbeck wrote to his son: “Nothing good gets away.”

Right here, right now, I don’t know that I agree with him, but I do think that life’s bent is towards more life. When faced with loss, people tend to adapt and survive. Objects, people, ways of living are temporary, but that does not stop them from being beautiful. Someone makes you soup; spring arrives.

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I am trying to get better at using this to share when my writing gets published, so, when pertinent, I will be sharing bits and bobs of published work at the ends of these free-wheeling essays. First, I had my first sonnet published in Identity Theory recently (2 days Before Fire, no less). Second, my dear pal Amy created a new poetic form, and with our other dear pal Hannah, the 3 of us shared a little poem prompt with 3 new original poems of our own. It’s been heartening reading people’s responses. We’d love to read yours, too!

1. They just announced they are getting rid of this TODAY?! Guess they got the memo re: impermanence. Officially taking credit card recommendations!