Stuff

Today I am grateful for stuff.  George Carlin did a whole comedy routine on “stuff”.  I can relate.  I have a lot of stuff.  More than I need, less than I want.

I like my stuff.  I can tell you with 99% certainty where my stuff came from, who gave it to me, or when and why I bought it.  If you have stuff that means nothing it’s not stuff it’s junk.  Stuff is cool.  Junk is in the way.  I have some junk, too but I’m getting rid of it.  Honest.  Otherwise I won’t have room for more stuff.

We can’t change our furniture around much because of the way the townhouse is designed.  We could move the TV from one side of the room to the other, but the work involved would not be worth it just to have a near mirror image.  So I use stuff to make changes.  A basement full of stuff.  A storage room upstairs full of stuff.

For his birthday one year while we were in Jakarta, Indonesia, I got John a beautiful woven table, hand-sewn with tiny shells.  We have not had it out of storage for 8 years because we just didn’t know where to use it.  I had John haul it downstairs so I could think about where to put it.  It would be lost as an end table because our furniture is too tight.  There was absolutely NO room on any square inch of our floors.  None.

We had the thing standing in the middle of the sunroom where I could look at it and ponder my options.  John measured it for 15 different possibilities.  It was starting to irritate him.  “Are we ever going to do something with this or should I haul it back to the storage room?”  Pondering takes time.  I eyeballed it and knew it wouldn’t work anyplace and considered his question.  Then one morning I woke up thinking. . .UP. . .it has to go up.  So we cleared off the pottery and stuff we had on the top of the TV unit and put it there.  It was time for a change.  I need to look at some different stuff for a while.

The pictures don’t really do it justice, but you get the idea.  I’ve even added a few little wooden sculptures from Bali since I took the pictures. Cool stuff

John keeps asking, “Can I put the ladder away, now?”  Silly man. 

“No, not yet,” I tell him.  “I have to look at this for a few days.  I’m still not sure about the lighting on the right side.  I might want to move some stuff around.” My house is my stage and without proper lighting, you might as well forget it.  With proper lighting I can make beat up pots and pans look creative and beautiful.

The table was handmade and I found it in a great store called “Confetti,” in South Jakarta.  The pottery is all from a beastly hot shop in Bali.  The hand-carved sculpture of Javanese dancers at the top is ebony and was a gift from my dear friend, Tati.

Our stuff is everywhere and I’m so grateful for each and every scrap of it.  Even the stuff waiting in the basement.  Even the stuff that might one day become junk. . .when I’ll have to consider getting rid of it. . .unless I turn it back into stuff.