Having recently moved from a largish house to a smallish apartment and, in the process, divested myself of a good half of my belongings, I am not allowed to shop anymore.
This is why, when I stopped in at Rummage, a monthly artists' sale held at Nation (1921 Fifth Ave, www.iheartrummage.com), I brought no money at all. It was a moot point anyway, since I'd spent the last few dollars of my last $20 on coffee and parking.
What this means is that it was inevitable I'd run into John Seal, an artist I owe $20 to for a really neat Pat Benatar mirror, since whenever I see him I have just spent my last $20. Luckily, John Seal is one of the nicest humans around. Instead of scolding me, he told me about some self-help tapes he'd been listening to.
I told him about being saddled with things, about the four trips to Goodwill and two trips to the dump, about the box of uncategorizable stuff I still have, most of it knickknacks and trinkets given to me by my mother. He suggested I turn them into an art installation. But what would I do with it, I wailed. We settled on a performance piece, in which I would embed each object in concrete and then throw it into the Green River, a symbolic act of liberation.
This conversation made it somewhat easier to resist Rummage's treats, and there were many. It was a casual affair, with lots of unbelievably good-looking people chatting and smoking and selling hip crafts. The more-famous-every-day Sam Trout was there with his Lula coasters and his friend Matt, who had painted a portrait of Sam onto a Kleenex-holder clock (price: priceless). A lovely, wide-eyed blond girl was selling little wrist purses--perfect for club-going, blue quilted cotton with a yellow rubber-band loop--which I wanted very much, and there were two clever girls named Paulina and Somya who had solved the eternal problem of what to do with all your leftover cassettes (made, inevitably, by people you once loved) in a CD world: a large board covered with photo-transfers and nails. There were felt flowers and photographs, very nifty notebooks made out of old thrift-store books, glittery pins and magnets, little friendship pom-poms, which a sign suggested you tie onto your roller skates.
If only I could. But I had given the roller skates away.
