Transcript

I’m Maggie Smith and this is The Slowdown.

Someone recently told me that I’m a maximalist. I like things. My hundred-year-old house is full of books and records and artwork. It’s bright and colorful, more like a quirky collectibles shop than a museum. I’m sort of like a magpie—which also happens to have been my childhood nickname—because like those birds, I collect things that catch my eye.

In my home, I’ve run out of walls for artwork. I’ve also, as you can imagine, run out of room for bookcases. I don’t necessarily need more living space—the house is small, but it’s plenty large enough for myself and my two children. What I could use is more display space for the things that give me pleasure when I see them. I don’t want my treasures tucked away in drawers, behind cabinet doors, or packed away in boxes. I want to see them daily. I want to be reminded of where I found them, or who gave them to me, or what they mean to me.

Don’t get me wrong—I don’t hoard, and clutter stresses me out. I love to get rid of things as much as, if not more than, collecting. It gives me a great deal of satisfaction to clean out my closet, my bookshelves, and my attic, and to donate items I no longer need. It gives me a burst of energy—wind in my sails! I’m only precious about things that are, well, precious. I can sell or donate a sofa or table without a twinge of regret, but I would probably run into a burning building for the Mother’s Day cards my kids have made for me.

I think of T.S. Eliot’s concept of the “objective correlative”—an object in a poem or story that represents an emotion. It’s a kind of imagistic shorthand. Many of the objects in my home, like objects in literature, are symbols—they stand for things that have bigger, deeper meanings. The books and records, the paintings and photographs, my children’s drawings and stories—this is the stuff of my life.

Today’s poem speaks to the things we are drawn to, and to the compromises that must happen when we share space with others, and when there just isn’t room for everything.

Arrangements
by Adrienne Chung

First we installed a tall white cabinet
and filled it with books, records, a cracked vase
we found in Crete.
You said you liked things the way
I did. So did I.
Quickly we added a table, chairs, lamps, then a desk, until
we had no more room for a sofa, but I supposed
we weren’t sofa people anyway.
You agreed. I took your hand
as we stood on the curb and watched the sky
turn from blue to black.

In that certain light I can see again
all the base configurations we attempted
as we tried to think our way out of this
and then that, one light bulb burning out after another
until it was noon again.

Neither of us knew what to do, 
so we sold the cabinet 
and bought a sofa. It’s been months now
and still the books lie open on the wooden floor, 
the pages sailing out like moths
in the dark.

"Arrangements" by Adrienne Chung. Used by permission of the poet.