memories collected through objects.

i was going through some boxes today. they are full of accumulated and stored possessions: postcards, notebooks, pencils, stones, handmade cards, pages ripped from magazines, drawings from little people, ticket stubs. old photographs of my parents before and during their marriage, and of my own childhood. in one notebook, i found a short section i copied from italo calvino's if on a winter's night a traveller. i loved that book: its twists and tangents; the language. calvino is a master of story-telling.

"There are countless things that you accumulate around you: fans, postcards, perfume bottles, necklaces hung on the walls. But on closer examination every object proves special, somehow unexpected. Your relationship with objects is selective, personal, only the things you feel become yours: it is a relationship with the physicality of things, not with an intellectual idea that takes the place of seeing them or touching them. And once they are attached to you, marked by your possession, the objects no longer seem to be there by chance, they assume meaning as elements of a discourse, like a memory composed of signals and emblems. Are you possessive? Perhaps there is not yet enough evidence to tell: for the present it can be said that you are possessive toward yourself, and that you are attached to the signs in which you identify something of yourself, fearing to be lost without them." [italo calvino, if on a winter's night a traveller - i forgot to write down the page number]

the quote in question most definitely relates to my life. it also begs questions of memory and possessiveness. are the memories captured in out minds merely enough for us? or are many of our memories now stored within physical objects? how many memories are there in the world? how many forgotten objects, loaded with memories, are hoarded in boxes; which will, one day, be found, held and wrapped in a hand, evoking forgotten memories from the past?