Sentimental Fool

It's back, it's up, it's off and running. You really should participate.
It's the Arsty Essay contest over at Judith's chateau. Judith HeartSong <~~ Linkage
And it's a difficult one!!!! In a good way, go visit, try it, do it, you know you wanna.

(topic currently pilfered for advertisement and mussing purposes, please visit Judith's for full details, rules, guidelines and deadlines)

"What is your favorite and most inspiring possession? Tell us about it, and if you want an extra creative challenge... tell us about it without naming it until the very last sentence of your essay:):):)"

That Judith is a crafty one if I may say so myself. I'm not letting those little smiley faces fool me, it was a very crafty and brilliant/difficult topic to throw to us mere emotional humans.

When I read the topic, alarm bells and the electrical currents called my thoughts seized up in instant conflict. This is why..........

I, Rebecca Anne, am a self proclaimed sentimental whore.

If something has a story, meaning, physical or mental value, I keep it. I have a well designed system for storing all these items, call boxes. Wood boxes, pretty boxes, lockable boxes, glass boxes, metal boxes, jewelry boxes, marble boxes, big old hope chests, teeny tiny jeweled boxes, handmade boxes, doesn't matter. If it can pass off like a Pandora's box, without the plague if you open them, hiding my favorite things, it'll do.

There isn't a room in my house that doesn't house some sort of box, filled with my favorite and most prized possessions. I can only think of two things that are very sentimental and prized that aren't cased in domains of 4 walls and a top. My flyrod and my art collection on the walls. Everything else I possess can be blown to the four corners of the earth and I wouldn't really care. But my boxes of sentimental gold and my walls of art and the flyrod that usually lives in my Tahoe are utterly important on the grand scale of prized.

Pick one? Play favorites? Place one above the others?
Judith, Judith, where art thou's merciful creative soul?

Since I read the theme yesterday, I've played a few completely totally sick and twisted scenario's in my head, just for mind bending fun. The best one is............"Your house is on fire, and you have time to grab one thing, what would it be" .........thinking that if I played that game with myself, I could narrow it down. All that did was coax me into looking into the financial costs of building a completely fireproof room in my house.

The thing is, very few of my prized items are worth any monetary value. I doubt anyone would give me a single buck for some of the rocks I've collected from all over the world. Or donate 10 cents for a pressed flower I found atop a mountain in Montana. There is no value on a note written by my then 5 year old daughter telling me I'm the best Mother in the whole wide world, even to the moon and back. There's no value, other then sentimentally on a completed journal I've written, or a story I've tossed on paper. Or a piece of cut ribbon from a present I received. And letters, my beautiful cherished letters.... I save every single solitary letter ever written to me and I think I would perish should anything happen to them.

I'm 35 years old and I think I've been saving the most important sentimentally valued things of my life for 30 of them. I know this, I've learned over time nothing I buy for myself is of great importance. Nothing I can go to the store and toss in my cart can compare to something given me by a friend, a loved one, or found during my wanderings. I may be alittle off my rocker, but can anyone else say they cherish a green rock found on the banks of the Lamar River while fishing with an extremely special person? I think not, thats why it is so very damn important to me. It isn't even really the pretty rock, it's everything that rock represents.

I'm home for a few more days, I'll be doing my very best to write up an essay. I'm just not sure how in the sam hell I'm going to pick one solitary thing. Can we go metaphysical here? Then I wouldn't have to play favorites and offend any of my physical possessions...................I love my prized sense of ummm, well, floaty thought..............