December 1, 2005 at 8:28 am · Filed under Lost OR Left Behind
Lost or Left Behind Article #2:
sierra designs orange/purple jacket with side vents
On my first day working at Stone’s Throw in August of 2001, the owner and my boss, Bob, brought this jacket out. He said someone had left it behind months ago and never came back to find it. It needed a new home so it came to mine. It’s not my colour and not something I would buy on my own but a good jacket is not to go to waste!
It received quite a number of washings because I’m a little squirmish about wearing strangers’ clothing but since then, I’ve taken it on many bike rides. It knows the smell of my sweat. But who wore it before me? I always wonder that.
November 19, 2005 at 3:47 am · Filed under Lost OR Left Behind
It is 3:47 am. I can’t sleep. The woman below me must hate me because I am sweeping my bedroom floor and making a lot of noise. I thought that I made most of the dust in my apartment but now I’m thinking that I’m actually a dust filter. Gone for 10 days and you wouldn’t believe how much has accumulated! Can you make a sweater from dust? I would like to know if this has been tried. If so, I might make a cardigan and I will give it to the lady below as a kind of apology gift.
But this is not the point I’m making right now. I might have mentioned before that I’m trying to clean house, sell things, get rid of it all. Mostly influenced by the coming move and that I’ll have 1/5th of the space I do now if I’m lucky. Also influenced by the fact that I have too much crap and all the attachment to it just brings me down. I don’t want my life to be measured by what’s in this apartment but unless I have some separation from it, things will continue to be that way.
As I scan my place and make mental notes of what will happen to all these objects I remember where they came from and how they became *mine*. Some were given, others bought, and a few found. OK so that sounds like I’m subtly saying I stole them and I stress that lost or left behind articles were not stolen. No, these are articles that:
- belonged to someone else in the past
- the someone no longer wished to possess the article OR after losing it never came back to find it (time period between losing and become truly left behind is dependent on the article and can be a sensitive matter in some cases)
- the someone does not know you have the article and you don’t know who the someone is
- were not purchased by you, but found…free
Lost or Left Behind Article #1:
crummy pottery dish / ring and small jewelry holder
I think it was the summer after grade 7 or 8 that I took a pottery class at the South Leisure Centre. This would be in 1993 or 1994. We started with some basic sculpting, had one class at the wheel, and then another few to paint and fire our pieces. There were maybe 7 of us in the class and as the weeks went on that number dwindled to a small 3. Pieces made by those who stopped coming to the class were left behind on a shelf in the kiln room. During the second last class the instructor suggested that if we liked any of these leftovers we should paint, fire, and take them home.
I found this one bowl / dish thing and decided to paint it not so much because it was attractive looking but because I had painted my own piece to quickly and had nothing left to do. I took it home and it grew on me. In fact the small bowl I made was given to my mother and I assume is still on top of the kitchen fridge (ah bless parents who hang on to their childrens’ creative pursuits). This became a fixture on my dresser to hold rings and other small pieces of jewelry.
Sometimes I look at its imperfections and try to guess the shape and size of hands that sculpted and molded it. It is uneven, asymmetrical and there are small clumps of clay that were fused to the surface. I have no clue who originally made it but he or she is probably out there somewhere and that is the beauty of it all.
