contemplating simple perfection

my mom brought us her first tomato. it is kind of a perfect one. the shape, color, size. it brings out the hoarder in me. i don't want to eat it - i just want to keep it so i can look at it forever. but it's perishable, so it must get eaten.

when i was a kid i would save anything that i liked. i would try and keep things neat and pristine. hence i have hello kitty erasers and pencils that i'm JUST NOW starting to use [i have a pencil case that i think i'll pass onto the little when she gets old enough]. i would silently shake my head at my friends who ripped all their stickers off the backing and put them everywhere. i always wanted duplicates - one to use and one to keep.

i have mixed feelings about this. part of me still practices this - although i've loosened up a lot. i use things when i want to [the childhood me might keep a set of markers until they dried up and weren't usable. the adult me realizes some things don't keep forever and to use what you have when the fancy strikes you]. part of me wonders why i would hold such trivial things so dear.

it even applies to food. i would always save the best part of something for last. so if it was a cupcake i'd tend to eat around the outside until i got to the last bite of the absolute middle. i still often do this. saving a bite of food i know will be most flavorful for the last bite that i take. i guess i want to savor and remember....

then again - often it's in the very simple and mundane that i find the most perfection.



like these spoons. i woke up and my husband had lined up our little baby spoons on our kitchen table. i'm a sucker for anything in rows. and colorful things in rows. well.... i can get absolutely giddy. this very small gesture made my whole day. and i had to take a photo of it to "keep" it.

maybe that's what has also changed. when i was a child i couldn't photograph something to remember it by [or it wasn't as easy as it is now] - and so i wanted to keep everything so that it could "live" not only in my physical world, but in my mental world. now i can photograph a fleeting moment [or tomato] that i find intriguing... and thus it stays with me for as long as i want it to.

i wonder if there's a term for hoarding digital imagery. it's not like it sits in noticeable piles like everything else i hoard - ahem i mean collect .

what do you notice? what do you hoard? what small moments of perfection make you gleeful?

have a great weekend