The Archeologist

Needing Things

I've developed an archeologist's way. My home is a stratum of things. Things I pick and choose from websites that find their way to me after an epic journey, like Odysseus, from all parts of the earth. I'm not a hoarder. I can dispense if the old things, the packaging. I can make a difference from the things that matter and the things that don't. I simply lack a systemic procedure to catalogue the things and chaos rules.

Certain times I'll recall a thing of importance. I'll need the thing. To see it. To hold it. Like a dragon fondly admiring a golden shield in her hoard. But how does the dragon find her things? Like an archeologist would. It's necessary to recall how long previously she acquired the thing and then excavate the layers of armour, coins, diamonds, and swords. Recall when the battle occurred, when the village was immolated and all the townspeople's things became hers.

It's quite frustrating in practice. You may become obsessed with finding a thing for some time, maybe hours, while you frantically turn your stuff upside down, like a produce worker rotating the display for a few dollars an hour- barely enough to buy the new grunge CDs that flow from Seattle like a deluge. You may think about the thing for weeks and it sits in your mind like a pebble in your shoe. Or maybe the thing gets lost for years and it becomes a like a lost companion that you think of on occasion and in grief.

But there's nothing quite like the feeling of finding your needful thing. The terrible joy and feeling that the world is right. Like crawling in a cave full of darkness looking for a ring and finally accidentally stumbling on it. And like Gollum, finally holding the ring, the moment of happiness is fleeting until the next lost artifact consumes you.