Memory

"Don't throw anything away," says my Mom, standing over me in the disorderly work in progress that is my bedroom.

"I haven't tossed anything yet," I reply. "I'll set it aside and look at it later."

"No," she says, "Don't throw anything away. You'll regret it later."

Such is the absolutism of my mother's packrat tendencies, which have created in me a offsetting need to throw away, clean out, renovate and renew on a regular basis. I cannot stand having things just sit where they are and collect dust for long periods of time, unless for some reason they are collecting interest at the same time. I'm not above keeping things for sentimental value, and when I clean out my old files and papers, I enjoy rereading them, to the point I frequently fail to finish cleaning, lost in premature nostalgia for...whatever. She wishes to preserve forever; I wish to recollect once and sweep the floor.

There is a sort of invincibility in memory that memorabilia cannot rival. Besides, with the transferability and mutability of things that are just data now, what can't be preserved in a non-physical space? Words, photos, music, the collected knowledge and worthless arguments of the entire human race? Google is the ultimate packrat, if only mom would heed my desperate calls to really learn to use the Internet she would discover that anything and everything, regardless of the value assigned it, can be kept around forever. Have you ever opened up an old computer and just browsed the files? Insane what you'll find. I used to manually save instant message conversations; now Google does that for me (as I discovered, somewhat to my horror, recently). Google is coming out with the GDrive service soon, after which I don't know that I'll ever have a need for an external hard drive. A few gigs of flash storage should suffice for quickly moving data between non-linked computers. Everything else in the hands of our googly-eyed data overlords, reposing eternally in their timeless memory-city of Mountain View, California. I hear they have great cafeterias.

Which brings me to my music collection. In terms of senses, only smell is a stronger conjurer of random memory than music. I can actually listen to all my myriad cds and recall particular moments (many driving in my car) with particular people, years and years ago. Some connect, like frayed wires, to images I no longer understand, devoid of context. Some others can summon entire complex scenes that I can almost step back into. I can vividly see my hands on the steering wheel and the dark-dark of driving aimlessly through the Cleveland Metroparks 2 or 3 AM the night before my high school friends and I all left for college, somehow linked to a Depeche Mode song, a girl I used to adore attached to a U2 song, and my old guitar teacher, Cheryl, who will forever be remembered by the various songs she taught me, her laziest student. And there are plenty that have no particular personal connection, but they had good music videos or I just remember really liking them.

I would call music a replaceable memory - it's not unique unless it's a recording I personally made. There are, thankfully, few recordings of me singing or playing guitar, so I don't see much reason in hanging on to all my physical CDs and their cases. Then again, I can't justify throwing them out or giving them away quite yet. I gave away all my nintendo games and now people are paying stupid amounts for the cartridges on Ebay despite the media being available for download (legal if you purchased the game at some point) online, or through a number of 'arcade' services offered through Xbox Arcade or Mii or whatever else current-gen consoles are serving up. So, much as with records, one must suspect that 'vintage' CDs will one day be in vogue, making them a collectible, and leaving me with no choice but to descend into the basement and hunt for a larger box even as my computer busily finishes burning the last few tracks from Beck's Odelay onto my hard drive.

This, from the guy whose bedroom is now almost entirely dominated by books - a medium I could probably stand with not compulsively collecting, given their size and weight. I can't help it - the sensation of being physically surrounded by knowledge and creativity, the feeling one gets in a really excellent bookstore (becoming an endangered species these days) or library - I'm willing to sacrifice some space for that. And there are a number of written things, notes from friends, cards, that cannot be replaced. Besides, like any true, dyed in the wool packrat, I'm not throwing anything away, I'm really just moving it around and calling it spring cleaning. Instead of my CD cases collecting dust in the open, they'll collect dust in private, and I'm probably even adding dust to a server in a room somewhere where I'll host all my data.

It's hard to let go, even when things are just things.

I Hope This Becomes a Tradition

The Chinese New Year: Dumplings, fireworks, the annual CCTV spring festival gala, and...



...a fucking space station.

Happy Year of the Ox!