So Much Junk in My Basement, I Really Need to Have a Yard Sale
Written by John Erianne on August 15, 2008 – 8:53 pm -I like to take a brisk walk every day. I usually walk about 5 miles (or 8k for my non-American readers), and my walks nearly always take me down Centerton Road — a long stretch that runs through 3 counties in Southern New Jersey. On the weekends, it seems like every other house along the route is having a yard sale. There’s at least 2 or 3 every weekend on the part of the road I walk along. That mean cars parked on the shoulder blocking my path and me having to maneuver around those cars while staying out of the way of speeding traffic. The first thought that occurs to me is how much those cars blocking my path and breaking my stride annoy me. The second thought is that I really don’t get the popularity of yard sales. Why would anyone want to buy other people’s garbage? I really don’t get it. Old lamps, board games with missing pieces, baby clothes with faded vomit stains, bobbles and boxes. Loads and loads of useless crap.
Then I had an epiphany of sorts: Being a writer is a lot like a yard sale. Think on that for a moment and see if you get my drift:
That useless crap at the yard sale wasn’t always useless, was it? And when we were just starting out on our journey to be writers, didn’t we hold sacred certain things we now think silly and useless? Remember that word you obsessed over for a month, using it in every story or poem, every chance you got and haven’t used in a sentence since?
Remember that summer you read Ray Bradbury and no one else because you thought he was the greatest writer who every lived.
Remember being fascinated with The Beats for 2 seconds back in 1988?
Remember filling a notebook with nothing but bad haiku?
As writers we go through these phases, eventually outgrowing our old obsessions and influences until we gradually develop our own style and voices. And even then, our own style and voices change and shift. Everything that grows old and useless is sloughed away, tossed away or packed in boxes.
Your trash — maybe someone else’s treasure.
