The Life of Objects
vol. one | winter 2019
4
heirlooms
8
hand-me-downs
12
secondhand
14
resources
Dedicated to my grandmother Martha Johnson
HEIRLOOMS PART ONE
I have a recurring theme that visits me regularly in my dreams. The details are different, but the basics of the plot remain the same. My grandparents have passed away and I have to frantically claim from their belongings what I want to be mine. In my real life, I was not around to help settle my grandparents' estate after they passed. My grandmother died first, in July of 2008 (my grandfather followed three months later) and I was asked immediately afterwards if there was anything of hers I wanted. It felt uncomfortable to speak my desires out loud. I’ve never fully understood the ease with which people stake claim to a loved one's belongings, sometimes well before they’ve taken their last breath. I also didn’t want to seem selfish or entitled or inconsiderate of the things someone else in the family might want. The truth is, if I could have packed up their entire house and kept it with me—or better yet, moved the house itself—I would have. It was the only place in my childhood that felt steadfast. My grandparents’ house was always my home. I requested a gold necklace that my grandmother often wore. I also asked for the old, maroon cruiser bike that she used to ride down the lakefront path with me in the toddler seat attached, happily waving to people as they passed. When I grew up and came to stay, I would take the bike out on the lakefront path, still happily waving to people, but from the driver’s seat this time.
The pendant on the necklace is a rectangular piece of gold with a delicately cut dragon that twists and curls. It is at once graceful and fierce, a description also well-suited for my grandmother. I know my grandfather bought the pendant as a souvenir for my grandmother during his travels abroad. The red velvet pouch it came in says Singapore and Hong Kong, but I am too young to remember which of these locales might be the dragon’s provenance. Origination story aside, I remember my grandmother wearing this necklace every day for years, or what felt like years to my child’s mind. I vividly recall sitting on her lap in her leather recliner and examining the etches and cut-out details closely as it dangled from the chain around her neck.
Prized possession though it may be, my grandmother’s dragon necklace is not yet an heirloom. By definition, an heirloom is a valuable object that has been in a family for several generations. I do hope to pass the necklace on, giving it the full weight of heirloom status, but what is valuable to me may not be so for my children, or my cousins’ children. It will be up to them to sort out their relationships to material things, heirlooms and otherwise, as I am doing on these pages, and as my loved ones have done before me when faced with the emotional and physical weight of inherited belongings that no longer belonged anywhere. But even for the things that unquestioningly belong, there is always the reminder that nothing lasts forever. Homes burn, thieves steal, hard times force hard decisions, and fingers slip. I am constantly preparing myself to lose the necklace, imagining how heartbroken I’d feel, like a form of emergency planning. Maybe it won’t hurt so much if I’ve imagined the worst a thousand times over. I have experience with losing precious things, so perhaps this is why my mind constantly turns these thoughts over and over again, smoothing them into something less jagged, like a stone worn by water.
If the necklace is ever lost, my memories of it and my relationship to my grandmother will, of course, remain. But there is power in keeping and wearing a treasured object that connects my current life to the life and spirit of a woman I so completely love. Recently one of my favorite artists, photographer Jamie Beck, shared a series of stories on Instagram (@annstreetstudio) about a fourchambered locket she was preparing with photos of her wedding day, her husband, and her grandmother. She was nearly due with her first child, a daughter, and the process of filling the locket was transformed from tedious to tender in her hands, as she imagined passing it on to her baby girl one day. Jamie’s photograph of her locket was the inspiration for the cover illustration. As she contemplated her relationship to the people whose images would fill the tiny gold frames, she shared the following:
“I’ve been thinking about [my grandma] a lot these days, wishing I could ask her for motherly advice and feel her calm wisdom. I think about the things she taught me in the kitchen and in the garden. I think a lot about her hands. I can’t write this without crying, because I never knew a relationship could continue to grow and enrich and bring you closer even after someone has passed on.” I had never thought of it quite this way, but it’s true that my relationship with my grandmother has continued to nourish me even though she’s been gone for ten years. She is alive again in my dreams when she visits, in my memories when a happy time crosses my mind, and around my neck when I put on her necklace nearly every day.
MATTRESS FROM FRIENDS +
ART FROM FAMILY
HAND PART TWO
ME DOWNS I’ve always been somewhere between a minimalist and a maximalist, aware of how stuff becomes weight, but also deeply attached to things. In my twenties, I moved frequently and sent carloads and carloads of stuff to Goodwill and, on a few occasions, left heaps of quality things behind for others to claim. I’ve sold entire households of furniture online several times over. And yet, I have been paying for a storage unit in Minneapolis every month for over THREE years, because I can’t afford to ship it down yet, and it contains my grandmother’s bike and my father’s dresser. As I get deeper into my thirties, and become more aware of the environmental impact of all of this stuff, I’m finding myself slowly shedding old ways of relating to my home and the objects in it.
When my husband and I moved to Washington D.C. for a few months at the beginning of 2018, we took only what would fit in our cars and sold nearly everything else. We weren’t sure if we’d come back to Florida or head somewhere else and I was ready for a fresh start anyway. When we ended up back in Florida, we rented a house from a friend that generously came with a worn-in couch, a small dining set, and a queen bed. It was a complete relief to know we had the basics we needed right away, but I still thought of these things as temporary, holding us over until we could afford to swap them out with furniture of our own choosing. We added some bookshelves and a nice TV with wedding money over the summer, but we never swapped out the borrowed furniture. In fact, we added several more bookshelves, an oversized wicker console table, a big wooden desk, and an old velvet chair to the mix—all given to us by my husband’s parents. Nothing really coordinates. It isn’t the modern-yet-cozy vision I've created in homes past. I remember telling my husband, not long ago, that I couldn’t wait until we lived in a house filled with furniture we picked out ourselves. I’m ashamed now as I think about that memory, for many reasons. I can hear my mother reminding me that we already have SO much more than most people in this world and that I should be grateful.
COUCH FROM FRIENDS +
LAMP FROM FAMILY
CHAIR FROM FAMILY
SAILBOAT FROM FAMILY
But beyond feeling gratitude for what we are so graciously given, my heart has changed. I now see hand-me-downs as a reminder of the family that loves us and is willing to give us their own possessions to help make our house a home. I see the memories of life and love in every scratch and stain. I see the community around us, lifting us up and ensuring our needs are met. And I see secondhand giving and receiving as a radical act of care for our earth in a time defined by feverish overconsumption, which only seems to grow exponentially with every passing year. I still love new things. I still dream of a couch with a chaise and a king sized bed. I will always be an aesthete, stimulated and entranced by desirable objects and dazzling environments. But I also see that it’s people who give these objects their perceived value, and this value is not an innate, fixed quality. It’s a decision. And I have decided that true value is far deeper than price tags, designer names, or a picture-perfect, "Instagram-worthy" home.
Second hand PART THREE
Secondhand shopping is having a moment right now, especially among Millennials. Though Goodwill was founded in 1902 and vintage stores have seemingly always had a certain cachet to them, websites like Poshmark and ThredUp are moving the secondhand fashion market into arguably more mainstream territory. According to ThredUp’s 2018 report on the state of fashion resale, 44 million women bought used clothes in 2017 (that’s roughly 1 in 3 of us). This is a leap of nearly 10 million more women from the year before. It seems that secondhand is becoming a market based on desire more than necessity, motivated in parts by the ease of manufacturing on the brand side (everything is fast, cheap, and disposable), the ease of resale on the consumer side, good marketing, and (increasingly) concerns about the environment. Typically, secondhand items are socially celebrated only when sourced out of desire (and not need), turning something that is often a symbol of the poor into a symbol of cleverness and taste when in the hands of people with means. This contextual value (versus universal value) and acceptability of certain things is a consistent problem in our society. We’ve come to call it appropriation in cultural contexts, but the core of the issue isn’t just about appropriation itself. It’s a wielding of power and class in order to draw lines around what is acceptable, and these lines almost always favor whiteness and wealth.
I recently heard a story about a little boy who needed a winter coat. His family turned to a clothing bank to meet this need, but there was only one coat left in his size and it was red with sequins on it. He asked if they could be removed, so someone at the charity did just that, which resulted in a very happy little boy. This coat wasn’t just acceptable to him, it was exciting to him, because it was finally a coat of his own. The instinct of the person sharing the story was to find the boy and buy him a brand new coat. As sweet and loving as that instinct was, a more compelling action might be to take that money and effort and put it toward changing a system that creates widescale poverty while simultaneously encouraging endless consumption. Of course a person can do both things —buy a brand new coat for a little boy and work toward dismantling the system that keeps his family poor.
But, it’s worthwhile to question what we value, where those values came from, and who makes money off of them at the end of the day. Why devalue a used coat when it is loved by its new owner as much as a brand new one? The coat is a symptom of a problem, not the problem itself. We live in a culture that tells us “new” is inherently superior, but as resale and vintage become more accessible and more popular, it’s worth asking questions about how and why we show up in these spaces, as well as the effect when we do. If objects were designed with longevity in mind first and profit second, what would that system look like? If every item created had to have, at its conception, a plan for its reuse or complete recycling (cradle to cradle), what would that system look like? If we no longer fell into cultural zeitgeists around status symbols and instead turned inward to ourselves and our immediate communities for direction on desire, what would that system look like? If we started to shift our values from charity to equity, what would that system look like? I’m just beginning to intellectually walk this path, and I have a long way to go to fully integrate it into my actions. The first steps are always the hardest, but I invite you to take the journey, too.
RESOURCES & INSPIRATION People to follow for an Instagram feed filled with earth-friendly insights and goods.
WHO Roshanda Cummings + Erin Johnson (aka Roe + E) WHAT Creators of The Jar Method workshop and minimalist couple whose aim is freedom and unapologetic living. They share their lives and their hard-earned wisdom generously with their community, with insights into living more with less. WHERE @brownkids
WHO Zero Waste Influencers and Ecopreneurs WHAT A selection of IG accounts focused on sustainability and sharing simpler, less wasteful daily living habits.
WHO Milkmade Vintage (aka Michelle Erba) WHAT A hand curated, Instagrambased vintage goods shop filled with a delightful selection of clothes, jewelry, home goods, art, and more. WHERE @milkmadevintage and milkmadevintage.com (coming soon)
WHERE @celinecelines @jane_and_simple @zero.waste.collective @dominiquedrakeford @bezerowastegirl @raphaelamiens Photo by J. Crosby, Jane and Simple Living
“Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift.�
Albert Einstein
CONTACT
For questions or comments, reach out to hello@heyashlie.com
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THANK YOU
Thank you to Jamie Beck, Roe Cummings and E Johnson, J. Crosby, and Michelle Erba for allowing me to be inspired by and share your work. And thank you to Beth Pupke for generously proofreading.
© 2019 Ashlie Johnson Coggins All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the editor, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the editor, addressed "Attention: The Muse Permissions," at the address below. hello@heyashlie.com www.heyashlie.com