The Collector

To call me a pack rat would be an understatement. I collect books, photos, art supplies, magazines, teas, chocolate, honey, vintage clothes, fabric, costumes, seed bead necklaces, and seeds. Yes, an evolutionary anthropologist might say I have a displaced urge to hoard supplies for my tribe's survival. It's true, I live under a feast or famine kind of anxiety. Sometimes I have work and money and sometimes I work for free and go into debt. I am always hoarding things for a rainy day. Well, there are a lot of rainy days here in Vancouver, and today's one of them. I am a greedy hoarder, I'll admit. Especially since I have had a child. It just makes me that more id-oriented. I know some people think I'm crazy. I come by it honestly and think part of my obsession comes from my grandmother and father going through the depression. It shaped the way they collected things. It made them frugal, although my father is an incredibly generous person. He has given away many many things to people in his community and to my sister and I. My mother is the same.

Some people watch the weather obsessively--doesn't this come out of the same survival instinct that would have been an essential skill in the past? Once we are uprooted from our natural environment and brought into cities we can lose the sense of being in touch with the seasons. I think this makes us a bit mad (speaking for myself, of course.) I know that ever since I moved to Vancouver I have been obsessively creating an seasonal/emotional map of the city. I've written poetry that takes place over a walk in the neighborhood in the "I did this, I did that" style. I create comfort zones by visiting the same restaurants and coffee shops over and over again. My regular visits to UBC farm act as a touchstone to assess where we are in the season's cycle.

After all, our increasingly urbanized culture is in denial of seasonality. We buy strawberries in January and take holidays to tropical destinations in the dead of winter. I don't know how healthy this is, in fact I'll go out on a limb and say it's making us alienated and neurotic (again, referring to myself above all.) Every time I go to an event that revels in seasonality it is a healing experience for me, especially when it's not raining!!! I've been reading about traditional phenological knowledge and it is blowing my mind. This is very important information that kids should be learning in school to increase their connection to location and climate. I'm determined to share this knowledge. I'm hungry for it. I will collect it, but I won't hoard it. I promise.