Collections

I've been thinking about collections. What we collect intentionally. What we collect inadvertently. Moving does that to you. Suddenly you don't have rooms and rooms and rooms, not to mention basements, to put things away or display them.   Instead you find yourself reviewing and evaluating. Things that were saved more or less by chance turn out to the ones that make  you catch your breath. The beginning of a collection you started after thinking and planning -- not so much.

With most of my collections either in a storage room or my car, I'm thinking about what's necessary and what's important. What is it I really want to collect from here on out?  Can't take up a lot of space. Probably shouldn't be breakable. Well, what do I find myself going back to? Recollections. Recollections of moments. Moments when I stopped dead in my tracks and said:  That is the most beautiful or amazing or moving or fill in blank thing I have ever seen/experienced. I guess it won't come as a surprise to anyone who knows me that one of those moments was the first time I saw the Lippizaner stallions perform in Vienna. Or the daVinci cartoon in the Tate. The Birth of Venus at the Uffizi. More recently Diego Rivera murals in Detroit. Standing on a mountain in Austria and experiencing the power and serenity and peace and trying to internalize all that.

So I think the answer is that I'm going to collect moments. Moments that make you stop, literally stop, to take it in, to try to absorb. I won't even need to grab my iPhone for a picture. That would only be a distraction.  They'll be there, in my head, in that catch of breath. That's what I'm doing now. I'm collecting moments.