What Objects Remember
A diary holds the self you mean to become; your possessions hold the self you repeated. Testimony from three umbrellas, a mug handle, and a worn shoe heel.
Helping a friend pack for a move, I kept getting distracted from the boxes by the belongings. The objects talked about their owner constantly. Stories she had never once told me, her things were telling on her behalf. Since that day I sometimes walk through my own room as if it were a stranger's. What sort of person lives here? I take down the objects' testimony as a list.
Three umbrellas by the front door. All of them clear convenience-store umbrellas, each still carrying something like the smell of the rain it was bought in. This is not a person who checks the forecast. This is a person who meets the rain, every time, as if for the first time.
The direction of the mug handles. Washed and set upside down to dry, the handles all point to the back right, every time. She would tell you she puts them down any old way. Her hand has been making the same decision for years. The body keeps rules its owner was never told about.
What interests me about an object's testimony is that it records frequency, not resolve. A diary holds the self you mean to become; possessions hold the self you have repeated. Asking which is more real does not seem like the right question. They are records in different tenses, that is all. One is future tense. The other, present perfect.
The bundle of receipts in the desk drawer. Not failed to throw away. Chose not to. Some receipts are the only record a day left behind. A receipt for one cup of coffee can end up standing for an entire day.
The heels of the shoes. The right outer edge always goes first. Ten years running. There was a season of trying to fix the gait, and the shoes remember exactly how short that season was.
The spines on the bookshelf. Some books creased, some like new. Ask which ones were actually finished and the answer is not the creased ones; it is the ones whose back covers have faded in the sun. The direction of the fading points at the window. A bookshelf is a reading record, and also a record of light.
The testimony of objects has limits, of course. Objects know frequency; they don't know circumstances. Three vinyl umbrellas might belong to someone who never checks the forecast, or to someone whose younger brother keeps losing his, and who hands hers over every time. Read only the objects and pass judgment on the person, and what you are doing is no longer observation. It is fiction. A list of objects is best used only as far as the questions it raises.
Even so, I can't give the list-making up. A desk drawer is so often better company than a self-introduction. When we describe ourselves we reach for adjectives; objects speak in adverbs. Often. Every time. For years. In the end. For understanding a person, the adverbs are frequently the more useful part of speech.
Today's last entry: the keyboard this is being typed on. Somewhere between N and M, the plastic has gone glossy. Which finger polished it, by what habit, I couldn't say. That my own belongings still hold things I don't know is exactly what keeps the list going.
Before you leave the room, look back once. Everything in it is something you chose, kept, and touched again and again. You don't have to believe everything that list says. But it has earned one listen.
In the next margin
Night is next: the things that stay invisible until the lights go down.
The scene from another angle
A Selvora Original ยท Mina Seo
A house byline of Selvora Editorial