Finders Keepers? When a Found Object is a Lost Object of Emotional Value
Two weeks ago, I lost my notebook and just to think about it gets me going enough to run another mile on the treadmill. It’s a small tan notebook, a moleskine cahier with my name on it in silver sharpie and the word “Twine,” the title of the novel I’ve been writing for the past few years. A postcard is tucked in the back flap, (“Rebecca on the Bed,” by Nan Goldin,) underneath it, a $20 bill.
Rebecca on the Bed by Nan Goldin
It is full of words and phrases and names of paintings I saw at galleries and books I want to read and maybe the occasional angry letter I scribbled out but would never ever send to a former partner, but besides that nothing of even the slightest entertainment value to anyone else. My handwriting is a cryptic code in any case.
Yes, I lost it. I’m careful here not to say “the notebook went missing,” the locution of passivity described by Theodore Dalrymple in his famous essay about language and accountability “The Knife Went In.”
So before I proceed — yes, yes! – I am totally accountable for my actions. I should remember to keep my purse zipped and not carry so many things around with me. But I’ve walked all over the place looking for it without success, so wherever it is — a landfill or someone’s found object box — it got there by another set of hands.
I lost it somewhere within several blocks in Central Square in Cambridge, a neighborhood which might have the highest concentrated population of college-educated computer-literate people in the world. Were anyone to find it, googling the name on the notebook cover or looking her up on Facebook seems the logical next step. I called Toscanini, where I got a coffee. I called the Middle East where I went to get a drink. I’ve retraced my steps many times and I’ll still looking weeks later.
There is a “found item” fetish perpetuated by “Found magazine” and those who make art out of abandoned sales receipts and broken tires and such. For all I know it slipped behind a grid and was shred to pieces by an outgoing red line train. Still, I’m cursing and blaming my already pre-existing prejudices. I picture someone twee. Wears scarves in the summer. He or she thinks of my notebook as a found item, imbued with a mystical element showing how small the world is and how alike we all really are at the core. Neglecting to notice that our demographics have few variables.
This is of course a passive aggressive way to place the blame on someone else rather than me, the person who lost the darn thing. Yet it does make me wonder how many of the found letters and objects turned into art weren’t items special to someone else, who might still be looking for them.
Rejection of found art is mostly on the grounds of its materialism and pre-made condition. Well, I reject it unless an artist can determine whether someone really wanted to keep that old lamp by the bin or not, as the weekend’s flag-stealing vs. flag-tossing debate demonstrates.
Most of us understand a wallet’s value, and a cellphone’s — even the cheapest models, as the hassle or switching SIM cards to another — which is why Lost and Found listings are filled with many “founds” for both. There are plenty of “Lost” earring posts, but no founds on the boards I’ve looked. It’s asymmetry of perceived value. Most people see a lost earring as trash, and it often can be, except when it isn’t. Except when it’s that night the person decided to wear her grandmother’s old earrings or the ones she wore the night of her engagement or whatever.
That being said, losing things isn’t always a disaster. Sometimes it’s for the best, and sometimes it is on purpose. When I was a kid I got a call back after sending out a balloon with my number tied to the string. Another kid, just a town over got the balloon and called me with his mom on the other line serving as a moderator. After some chatting about how funny it is someone actually got my balloon and the note and how I can really tie a knot, we hung up as there was nothing else to say. But that event always stayed with me, and there have been moments when I’ve thought to leave a journal on the train for another passenger to pick up (journals my name and information is not written anywhere) as a way to peal away the layer of the memories, yet send the knowledge gained from these experiences out to someone else in the world. But I would always think about it more as a hypothetical, like the way people cross a bridge and sometimes imagine jumping over it.
It can be liberating to finally lose that old sweater you know you should throw away. It can even be liberating to lose something beloved. That zen satisfaction of detaching oneself from an object’s emotional significance and placing it square in the past as a memory.
At a conference a few months ago, the Tupperware keychain that looks like a dollhouse version of their plastic kitchen containerware (if you were a suburban child in the 80s, you know exactly what I am talking about) broke off from my keys. Despite its silly appearance it always served an important purpose — keeping my quarters in place. I used my last quarters on the parking meter so it was empty. When I came back from lunch I found two of conference attendees laughing as they fiddled with it.
“What is this stupid thing?”
“Where did it come from?”
I was too embarrassed to ask for it back. It’s not a big deal to me, but look, everything lost once belonged to someone else. So if you have my notebook, please give it back … or put it someplace I can find it.
Art by Cecily Brown.
Previously:
Collection or Clutter: Do You Toss or Save Grampa’s Old Paintings?
A Hundred Chances: White Lies Post-Facebook
-
BethanyTri
-
A collection of interesting ideas curated by
Joanne McNeil. About ➚
Sponsors
