These are a few of my favorite things...

Around my house, I keep many objects my that friends gave to me as presents at different times in my life. It is a way I surround myself with their presence and include them in my life. Yet, as friends come and go, sometimes these objects last longer in my space than the friendships themselves. Perhaps as a way to holding on to them, as memories of good times, or as a yellow ribbon tied to a tree hoping the friend will return someday after a rupture. Sometimes, I keep them just as a memorial to a good dead friendship.

Every time I move, I place all the “Friendship Objects” in the same box. Usually, they are small almost invisible to visitors, but I see them everyday. I have become a little my own life curator in my apartment memorials collection. Each object carries stories, about places, characters, histories, and relationships with love. One day, a friend of mine, who is an oral historian, came to visit me and started to notice and ask me about the little objects that caught her eye. Each little thing would bring up a whole story of some kind, its origin, its meaning, about the person who gave it to me, when, all of sort of things. The objects were not just occupying space or decorating; they had a meaning for me.

After 30 minutes of stories coming out of objects, with places, people, stories and relationships, my friend told me: You should write all of this. Why don’t you write about all these things? That is what writers do. They write about anything.” Magically, she opened some window in my mind. She showed me a way, and I started to write…about anything and everything. She has an object in my collection, of course.

An example of the wonderful “Friendship Objects” in my collection:

A Stone Eye
Natives say stones are the memory keepers of everything they witness happening around them. They even have people who can retrieve the information and know what happened in certain places by connecting with the rock person or reading its marks. My friend E. gave me as present this naturally shaped by water stone eye she found in Ireland, which has become one of my favorite objects. Having a stone eye witnessing what happens inside my apartment every day makes me think of my future and my present. If I were to ask the stone, what did she see during the hours she was sitting on my window altar by my computer…? What would she say? Hum...