Notes from the Garage Sale (part 1)

When I was young my Grandpa Andy drove a red pinto and the back of that car was stuffed full of everything you ever needed (and possibly didn't know that you needed).  He occasionally took me and my brothers with him to the Flea Markets where he would carefully set up a booth and gradually empty his car enough so that he could collect a hundred more things, bring them back here and sell them during jovial conversations with a hundred strangers.

I could always tell that the performative aspects of Flea Markets and Garage Sales were as important as the market aspects.  People wanted to coordinate their sense of self and their relations with strangers in a way that calibrated shared values and ways of seeing the world. 

This past summer I was cajoled into managing a massive garage sale where we tried to empty out our basement of twenty-some years of "maybe"ing things by just storing them on the wide shelves below.

Honestly, I don't think I realized until I typed that last sentence that when you store things in the basement they automatically start to leak into your unconscious.  They become the under-layer of your imagination.  So be careful of what you store down there.

The garage sale was as magical as I expected to be and yet every magical moment shocked me with its beauty and clarity. 

We were trying to sell a ping-pong table which was practical because it provided a great display space.  So many people came in and touched the ping pong table.  They dragged their hands along it's edges, asked minor questions about it and I could tell that with all of them that the voodoo of touching this object meant that they were both remembering something about a comforting, happy ping pong table from their early years and imagining how such a totem might transform their living space with the clicks and pops of the plastic ball against table and paddle.  The laughter, the gasps, the curses and the cheers that would waft in from the patio or the garage or up from the basement. 

One couple in their late fifties came and touched the table and were compelled to tell a story together.

HIM: It was what?  Thirty years ago?

HER: Thirty years ago we lived in this tiny cramped apartment and we wanted to play ping pong and so we put a net on our dining room table.

HIM: It was an oval.

HER:  It was an oval table and we played ping pong all the time.  How much do you think?

HIM:  Every night.

HER: Every night that's true.  For hours. Can you imagine having that much time? Can you imagine what the neighbors thought?

HIM: Because it was just an apartment.

HER: But we loved it!  We loved playing ping pong on that table.

HIM: It was an oval. You'd think that'd warp our skills.

HER: Or make us really really good.

(they both laugh.  agreeing with the hypothetical future predicted by that makeshift ping pong table so so long ago.)

(they shake their heads and back down the driveway smiling, holding hands, living for just a moment in that hypothetical future projected by that long ago past that they hadn't even thought of for so so long.)

And Lynn and I.  We stood there watching them go.   We stood there six feet away from each other.   Our marriage only recently legally dissolved.  The clicks and the clacks and the hopes and the dreams from this particular table echoing in our minds and we don't say anything to each other. 

The thing about rituals is that they help us let go and they help us hold on.  The meanings are polyvalent and necessary.  The therapy they provide is meted out in varying measure to their participants but all may accept it's salve in at least some small way.

That's why cultural performances like Rituals, Ceremonies & Public Displays are one of the 50 things of value.  They give us space to enter and yet hold our vulnerabilities slightly at bay.