The things I carried the things in

Emoting about toting

Raise your hand if you have too many tote bags in your house:

I went to the grocery store and bought eggs, milk and apples and was then forced to pay thirty-five cents for a big recycled-canvas bag so that I could carry those things plus the book I was reading before I shopped.

I truly did NOT want this bag and am still irritated that I was forced to buy it

However, even after purchasing it, I could not carry my items in it together:

The eggs would break if put in with the gallon of milk and the apples.
The apples would bruise if brushing the book.
The book would get wet from the condensation on the milk.
The only solution was to carry the milk and apples in the bag and then place the eggs on top of the book and carry those separately.

That is the thirty-five cent solution, and now I have yet another huge annoying tote bag to add to my two milk crates full of huge annoying tote bags. The plastic bag solution would have been to package them separately and then recycle the plastic bags.

It can’t possibly save the environment to have any kind of bags cluttering up our homes, but selling these tote bags for thirty-five cents a piece is adding insult to injury. I am okay with paying the five cents for a paper bag I don’t want. At least I can get rid of the paper in the recycling and imagine it is helping the environment (it isn’t, not as much as reusing things). To be honest, I miss the days of flimsy plastic bags that you would always keep in the house and reuse: pet poop, garbage liners, wet swimwear carryers, sick bags for the car, stuffing in packages, sorting yarn, closing up mouse holes in the wall, giving a friend something to carry home, etc.

So here’s the thing: we are all tote bags for our thoughts and emotions. Each person is a container of good and bad; and a lot of that stuff (past with present usually) bumps into each other and wrecks itself in your mind, sometimes actually messing up the shell that holds you together (we know for a fact that stress is the worst thing for your health) — so doesn’t it make sense to organize our thoughts and feelings among many different “tote bags” as it were - to give some of the sharp things to one person, and the delicate things to another, and not try to cram everything into just the one person that Disney tells you is your soulmate? I mean, it seems to me your soulmate is someone who can carry a LOT but maybe not everything. (My soulmate got ripped up and recycled himself - but he was a great carryer of my weirdest and most difficult things up until that time) — Anyway - It seems to me that as a human, no one can possibly know everything that you think and feel, but that in a web of chosen family, DNA relatives, people you live with, people you meet….there are a million available tote bags - and they are of different character. It is up to us to have the judgement where to share the things we carry in a way that doesn’t overwhelm them, but also that allows us to lighten our burden.

In this completely insane time when everyone is getting suckerpunched at every turn, and the people nominally in charge of holding things together are instead choosing to dismantle (and often to simply sledgehammer) entire shelves that used to hold our most solid thoughts and ideas, well, perhaps this is a time to share freely, to take what others give and pass those on as well, and to take a minute to assess ourselves as well - as containers of our own thoughts and feelings but also to check and see if we have any capacity left for the thoughts and feelings of others - and if not, perhaps we can share of ours to make room.

I’m going to Europe for a month and while I know exactly what I’m planning to pack, I am at wit’s end for what to pack it into. It’s so hard to find a great tote.

WRITING NEWS:

This article came out about me: it’s another interview in Authority Magazine “Five things you need to be a highly effective leader during uncertain times.” I wish it was broken into five shorter articles. It’s so long!

Speaking of long articles, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek review on Medium of the new Printemps department store on Broadway & Wall Street. If you like this photo of the over-the-top bathrooms, click through to the article - there are dozens more.

Besides glamorous shopping trips where I could afford nothing, I visited the Getty Museum with a dear friend who is a terrific writer and working on a second book co-written with his sister. I remember loving collaborations long ago. What happened?

Other inspirations this week: Art Expo, crazy dance party, and I went to see Floyd Collins at Lincoln Center and was reminded that I didn’t really like Redwood. I also went to the book launch for Cal Hoffman’s newest book, which featured a really great reading by Cal and John Burnham Schwartz: they went back and forth as though the novel was a screenplay. Clever!

(Cal and I got our Columbia MFA’s together)

Random Final Thought:

This was one of many descriptions of paintings in the spectacular Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Would you say this is a conservative museum or one that embraces all lifestyles?

I was endlessly amused at the heavy suggestions that avoided the obvious. The Gustave Caillebotte exhibit is called “Painting Men.” This was my favorite:

It’s a study for this famous one:

Reminding us all that even if you cut something from your work, it can sometimes be very effective on its own. (also that huge painting Rainy Day is magnificent in person, just FYI)

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