Archiving Objects: A Eulogy

erinrivero
Apr 14, 2018
5 min read

Updated: Nov 23, 2023

Libraries and archives both digital and physical alike become permanent vessels for the things of yesterday. They are the final resting places for treasures after toy soldier rescue operations from musty shelves and attic trunks and card table yard sales. They are the museums and virtual commons and immaculately temperature-controlled vaults where stuff lives on.

Perhaps it’s the anthropomorphizing of these objects that makes the special collector's task so sacred and personal. Or maybe it's the call of carrying forward the remembrance and historic significance of a thing's otherwise-forgotten past. Caretaker, holder of objects preserved, the archivist situates something far far away from its former home in a modern reality, somewhere between where it once was and where it now finds itself.

Like precious species in a zoo, special things gain a new context and thoughtful care, often to the delight of viewers observing behind a glass case wiped clean of fingerprints. Sometimes special things are tucked away, held within a custom-made box and only taken out for white-gloved admiration or the occasional spotlight as a rotating feature.

These faux environments, fishbowls, or sometimes unnaturally pristine containers--they are full of wonder and curiosity.

And yet they are cold. Like a morgue.

Does an object's value degrade when it's taken from its home? Is it dead, as if it had a once-vivacious soul? Are we disconnected spectators, merely admiring the taxidermy?

I'm torn between the power of preservation and the pain of losing touch with objects held in captivity. I struggle to find a better alternative to the inevitable rot, decay, and loss we'd otherwise see.

On objects and our relationships to them--how do we capture the essence of a thing, and not merely its specter? How do we preserve its meaning, for whoever held it most closely, and for those who will come to know it anew?

The contemplation comes at a time when I am preparing to say goodbye to a childhood home--the space where I learned to walk and sled and smell pine. It is where I played Monopoly until nobody could bear to play with me anymore, where I snuck spoonfulls of my mom's refrigerated cookie dough, pressed beneath wax paper in a mustard-colored bowl. Where I fed peanuts kept atop an ancient microwave to bluejays and squirrels who swooped and scampered to peck at their snacks on the homemade birdfeeder. Where I jumped rocks with my brother and swung from the tire swing. And where I was, like all children, invincible.

This was where I lived and loved and broke bones. Mended, grew up. Where I first read Bradbury. Where I retreated and disappeared for days into worlds in story and song.

It was there that I sought answers to questions I was afraid to ask myself anywhere else--there in my perpetual playground, study, laboratory, sanctuary. It was there that I found a constant, though the irony of its entropy is not lost on me. But there it was, year after year, stalwart and timeless in its brimmings with nostalgia and familiarity. It was my forever-place in which to dwell, to simply be in company of loved ones. Or to arrest myself, choosing tranquility and solitude, as in this moment.

Today I want to honor this place, these walls, and all the memories held within.

When we begin to prepare for such a move, we remove. We remove stuff, ourselves, our memories transferred to photo albums or shelved in the long-term storage of the mind's distorted thought palaces. The thought of not being here is a bit like taking out all of my guts and cataloging them on the floor. I am emptied out, disassembled, wholly alienated from my core components, like a perfect shell vacated by its long-time snail. Pages torn out, some with care, some with haste. Spine severed. Disembodied, as this home will soon be.

Much of the stuff of this place will become the stuff of dime store shelves, though some prized possessions will be salvaged, the winning souvenirs.

When you remove an object from the richness and warmth that once surrounded it, is that richness and warmth lost? Or can we butterfly-net-capture it, jar it up like a lightning bug, poking holes in the lid for oxygen? But sad, so sad as we peer upon the firefly's countenance behind the glass, faded into blue.

And so objects grow dim, and thus change with overwhelming permanence. They, like all things, are contextually situated. And preserving context is the unconquered feat of time machines. One can only circle near it, this context, and fabricate it, simulate it, document it, recall or recount it. But the real 'it' is gone, sucked into the wormhole thief that is time gone by. And the object is thus never the same as it once was, where it once was.

I mourn the loss of that 'it' today. I suppose that's part of acknowledging my own mortality, the mortality of my family, and our collective lived memories as we know them.

So here's to the memories and the stuff with which we measure our seasons. Today I release this home and everything it holds, these pieces of ourselves that I have clung to like the tunes that are my accompaniment to this writing. It all feels a feeble attempt to embrace the uncertainty of our own futures and final resting places.

But to that end, here lies a collection of things, each individually drawing toward its most beautiful and natural end, or its most unexpected new beginning. May we tell their secrets disguised as stories, unedited. Elevated. May these knickknacks and textiles and pieces of home be preserved in some way, stumbled upon in thrift stores, sewn back together for a second life, adopted, re-loved. And one day, may they turn back to dust in their apocalyptic landfills, unfurling their essence that is a bashful and modest reflection of our own.

Let it be known that they mattered--the objects, their vessel, their keepers.

Notes from the Margins

I made a five hour playlist in the midst of writing this piece. Because music and memoir make a nice duet, here is a selection of 25 tunes from that list in homage to a home and all of its contents.

Idyllwild

Books and Cinema: A Love Story

Archiving Objects: A Eulogy

On Living Dangerously

Archiving Objects: A Eulogy

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