Children love to collect things. In Hermione Lee’s biography of Penelope Fitzgerald, she describes her subject at age four collecting and making little piles of rose petals, naming and burying them. She also collected any number of things from the garden of their small cottage in the English countryside, bringing them inside, sorting and counting. My children did the same thing: feathers, shells, rocks, sticks, flowers and leaves stuffed into their pockets and brought inside to sort and arrange like living collages.
I collected all sorts of things as a child. From the back seat of the station wagon in 1960’s New Orleans, I copied phone numbers and names of businesses off buildings and vehicles. These were written on slips of paper, whatever I could find, and stuffed inside an old oblong wallet, white leather with black stitching, that my mother had thrown out and given to me. My many collections filled my bedroom. Blown glass animals, ceramic horses, tiny boxes, paper, stationery, erasers, Barbie clothes, books and more books. Mardi Gras night we all came home, counted and sorted or beads and trinkets, traded and collected them year to year.
Collecting is an expression of self, a creative extension of personality. When I collect things now I feel a direct connection with that child, much the same as when I play with a dog or climb a tree. I have snail-mail pen pals all over the world who announce in their profiles all the things they collect, from hotel stationery to view cards with butterflies to paper napkins. It’s extraordinary.
Hermione Lee’s biography of Fitzgerald also brought me to the existence of the ‘Commonplace Book’. These books have been around since the time of Marcus Aurelius. Many famous writers and artists are known to have kept them during their lifetimes. At Oxford, Fitzgerald encouraged her cronies to use one, and the concept was actually part of the curriculum.
The commonplace book is an answer to my life-long struggle of collecting thoughts, ideas, poems, quotes, books, movies, inspirations, conversations. I have notebooks, slips of paper, calendars, index cards stuck all over the place. Every now and then something amazing happens where several of these things from different sources connect and form a magic circle of inspiration. The synchronicities are called forth from the universe or who knows where, and start to appear in these little baubles that I record over a period of time. With a commonplace book, all these things are in one place, a notebook, a catalogue, a set of index cards, or files on an IPad. The connections can be seen and experienced and saved to be revisited as often as needed. Several of these have happened to me lately, one involving Gerard Manley Hopkins and Edward Hirsch, the other with TC McLuhan, Carl Jung and Clarissa Pinkola Estés, the latter connected to a letter from my 88 year old pen pal in Wales.
It is a way to simplify the overabundance of stimulation that bombards my poor brain in this modern age. When I write down a poem from the New Yorker, or something funny or profound from a conversation with my husband, or a six year old student’s wise comment, I add it to my collection. Over time the collection becomes an expression of a life, perhaps not anything anyone else will make sense of or even be interested in, but the process of doing it refines my sense of self. It connects me with my child-self, brings me closer to the Source, to what is real and true.
So I encourage you to collect something, preferably something small, not old cars or airplanes, and when you tend your collection, reconnect with who you were in your gladdest moments as a child. Also, try the Commonplace Book, it may be the best idea I’ve come across in decades.