Hoarde

HOARDER

I am a hoarder.  I’m 59 years old and still have “notes” that my high school girlfriend would slip through the vents of my school locker.  Perhaps even then I knew I was too lazy to keep a diary and that somehow these notes would substitute for that.  

But the hoarding did not stop there.  Far from it.  I have hundreds of t shirts.  Having been through talk therapy enough to now have part of my brain as an on board therapist I now vaguely realize that all this “collecting” was nothing more nor less than a rage against the realism of impending loss of memory, dementia, and ultimately death.  

Being woefully inept at social media I once fantasized about doing a vlog where I would pick an object every day and wax nostalgic about it on camera to my single digit subscribers.  Of course this circle would grow as word spread that my many friends and relatives would miss the vlog that included them and their vanity and desire for shared memories would take over.  It would be a kind of facebook where only the odd and poetic would make the cut.

A t shirt is the paradigmatic example of one’s attempt to memorialize and rage against death.   But a t shirt is much more than a selfie.  A selfie merely chronicles that I was here and I want the world to know it.  A t shirt communicates in real time a concept to everyone who sees it.  Much like a billboard on one’s chest.  I look forward to the day when the consumer realizes this and will not pay 20$ to advertise a product.

 My vlog will have to be very carefully curated; no mediocrity and full of sadness or joy with no middle ground.  I must get started right away.