gooollysandra

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Tag Archives: Letter to the Editor

7:44 pm - November 1, 2021 -

Collecting

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I come from a family of collectors. My parents collect art and antiques, my maternal grandparents collected art, antiques, and midcentury modern Scandinavian furniture, and my paternal grandmother was a hoarder. While collecting seems to be more thoughtful and intentional than hoarding, I think it is still a form of hoarding. In stride with familial traditions, I began collecting objects when I was in high school. After going to countless auctions and estate sales with my parents, which I hated as kid, I began to sense a taste for certain objects when I was in high school and I felt a need to create a collection of objects of my own that spoke to me. This desire was further fulfilled by the discovery of a fair store in my hometown, and not only did I love the objects themselves, I loved knowing that they were made by artisans who were perfecting their craft, carrying on artisanal traditions, and getting paid fairly in order to live a good life. I also added to my collection with trips to antique stores and garden stores. The curation of my collection resulted in these objects accumulating in boxes that I stored in my parents’s attic because I didn’t have space or a need for them at the time, but I dreamt of how I would use them in my future apartment in the city when I was “all grown up”. I have slowly taken things from these boxes to my various apartments in my adult life, and now these boxes reside in my childhood bedroom at my parents’ house for easy access.

I really connected with this letter to the editor by Hanya Yanagihara in The New York Times Style Magazine, as I’m constantly battling between wanting to collect and to live a full life surrounded by my collection, and navigating the overwhelming feeling of burden by these objects and the desire to go in the extreme opposite direction and become the queen of all minimalists. I have no resolution for this battle at this point in time, and I don’t foresee having such a resolution anytime soon. I love these objects that I have slowly and intentionally collected over time, and I will be sad if I let them go, but I also cringe at the idea of having a plethora of cluttered objects around me with no purpose but to sit pretty on the shelf.

This struggle is particularly top of mind at the moment as my parents and I have been going through the painful and stressful process of cleaning out my grandparents’ home to get it ready to sell. It is full of things that we all love and want to keep, but of course the dilemma of what to do with them and where to put them prevails. With the addition of these things into my collection and my parents’ collection, this struggle isn’t going anywhere and it’s about to get worse. I fear that “add it in, take it away” will be a driving force throughout this upheaval, which while completely logical and rational, is a gut-wrenching process for those of us who are collectors at heart.

Categories: Art, Interior Design Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
11:18 am - October 29, 2018 -

Present vs. Past

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Ok one more shout out to The New York Times Style Magazine Letter to the Editor…for now at least! “Present Tense” by Hanya Yanagihara spoke to me because in it she discusses how different the sense of history is in the U.S. versus other parts of the world. She mentions Rome specifically and its deep history that is literally alive all around you. Growing up in Rome I had the unbelievable fortune of experiencing this everyday, without realizing the magnitude of it at the time.

Any first-time (or hundredth-time, for that matter) traveler to Rome can’t help but marvel at how lightly, and with what matter-of-factness, the Italians live among antiquities: A walk down the street is a stroll across thousands of years; the 2,000-plus-year-old Largo di Torre Argentina, excavated in the late 1920s, was where Caesar died, but it is also where the city’s cats congregate for a sun-drunk loll. Other cities would have placed such a monument in a museum, behind walls and off-limits — here, though, there is so much history that such an approach is impossible. Instead, the Italians have learned that every building, every structure, is a palimpsest, and that their lives within it, superannuated or brief, contribute another layer to its long narrative.

It’s true that Romans walk around their city with ease  and a nonchalantness about their surroundings. I mean how lucky are they to have been plopped there by birth and can call that parcel of this world their home. How lucky was I?? And as Yanagihara points out, Romans contribute to their long, ancient history, in whatever finite way possible.

The oldness of a place like Rome, and the newness of the U.S. is apparent in the way that we, as Americans, approach our daily life, versus the Romans. The impatience and instant gratification of American culture is a testament to this. We don’t have a long history to look back on, and therefore looking forward, with a sense of restlessness, is the only way we know. Romans, on the other hand, take life as a stroll, literally and figuratively. They have such an extensive history to look back on and to reflect on how they got to where they are  now, that they are not in a hurry to go anywhere. I think this is true in the larger scheme of things, but it is also apparent to anyone who visits Rome and has to slow down their pace to match that of the Romans. While this may be frustrating for Americans, I think slowing down is only a positive practice.

Categories: Foreign, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
11:42 am - September 29, 2018 -

Fashion meets a sense of self

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Once again, I’m loving Hanya Yanagihara‘s Letter to the Editor in The New York Times Style Magazine about fashion’s role in defining our sense of self, as well as the greater implications it has on how we relate to others and the world around us.

The word fashion tends to allude to a luxury not attainable for everyone, but here fashion means the very basic practice of people dressing themselves to get out the door in the morning. Not everyone pays close attention to what they wear and they do it simply out of necessity. But other people, including myself, dress with a purpose; whether that is trying to align themselves with the current trends, going against current trends, wearing what is comfortable both physically and emotionally (yes I do think that what we wear affects our mindset and emotions), making a social or political statement, etc. are all wrapped into what we decide to put on our bodies.

At T, that language often takes the form of fashion — specifically, fashion as a way of communicating not just something about who the wearer of it is, but also, and with increasing urgency, the kind of world we live in…

Despite its reputation, fashion is a democratic art: We all engage with it in some way or another (even if engagement means disengagement, rebelling against what we interpret as its rules and conventions), and it remains the single most effective way of telegraphing who we are to the rest of the world. What we choose to wear is who we think we are, or who we think we would like to be.

We’re constantly looking for ways to define ourselves and to set ourselves apart as individuals from the overwhelming world around us – to be someone. Fashion is an easy way to do that because it is perhaps what those around us notice first, after our physical characteristics. If someone has a consistent style, people who spend time around that person will assign that style to him/her as a quintessential piece of that person.

I know I like to wear things that make me feel good. At work, for example, I like to wear clothes that make me feel productive and professional. At home when I’m just lounging around I like to wear something comfortable and whatever will inspire the most hygge at that moment (something I’m always trying to achieve, but as we all know, it’s hard to attain it; rather, it happens spontaneously when everything is aligned just perfectly). I don’t always dress with a purpose, but I tend to feel better when I do.

Category: Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , ,