Freecycle

A friend asked, "Where have you been?" How do you answer a question like that when you haven't been anywhere, just absent. In absentia, absent minded, nowhere, here, but not here. I feel a little disconnected while sleepwalking through the days, reading a lot while it rains, reading at magazines, reading at the paper, reading at a book on how to write letters, of all things. Who even writes letters anymore. Reading at, never finishing anything.

Yes, I got it at a garage sale. It was fun to visit with the young man who was selling his sister's things. "That is nice of you," I told him. "I get to keep all the money," he said, "so it is actually nice of her." He was selling his college books and her girlie collectibles. I bought a Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood. "It is a downer," he warned me. I told him some of us liked that. A melancholy read for a melancholy Finn. I will probably like it a lot.

In order to make garage saling legitimate in my mind, I look at it as an anthropological study. There, in a garage or on a driveway, people's lives are strewn over tables, on the cement, over chairs and dressers. Parking near by and walking up the drive seems a little voyeuristic to me, but not in a sexual way. Looking at people's cast off stuff, things that apparently were needed at one time, now just junk to them, seems much too personal. It is almost like digging through homesteaders garbage dumps, or Egyptian tombs. It is all anthropology on one scale or another; unless of course you need those kids clothes or worn out furniture or garden tools. I don't need anything, but I do find some things intriguing enough to bring home.

It amazes me that anyone has the energy to take all that stuff out, put little price stickers on it all, and sit with it for up to three days. Then the strangers park erratically nearby, shuffle through the assortment, fingering everything, examining objects from top to bottom and in the end perhaps spend a quarter on a unique box which once held three long hand rolled Nicaraguan cigars. Was somebody there in the '80's on one side of that situation or the other? Perhaps a gift to a grandpa. Now it is mine to put some little treasure under the sliding lid, or not.

Today L, from Melbourne, Australia, sends this amazing web site to our congenial list of elder emailers. It is worth a little exploration and tempts me to join the Omaha group. I am all for getting rid of stuff and certainly embrace the idea of giving it away rather than trying to sell it. Introverts are not salesmen, or women. I am the sort of person who apologizes for giving away stuff as I am so concerned that it might be insulting. No, instead we haul used, but usable, things to the Salvation Army. I don't ever get a receipt. Why bother?

Maybe through Freecycle I could join the local group and chance not insulting someone while giving away an item I probably bought at a garage sale long ago. No not the horse collars with mirrors, nor the Texas longhorns, nor the oil paintings nailed to the back fence, nor the little footstools for this five foot Finn. Yes, I got a nice one so I can see into my top oven. I think I will paint it blue to match the Oscar Howe Antelopes in Flight over the table.