Dude, Where Are Your Things?
Are we the only people in this world who own things? It’s like every time I am at somebody’s place for the first time I get the feeling that we must be very strange people because we actually have things at home. Like books. Or CDs. Or, you know, movies on video or DVD. A lot of them. And other people apparently don’t.
Take books for example. We have three IKEA Billy bookcases sized 60×202 cm, two sized 80×202 cm and one sized 60×106 cm stacked with books. And I don’t even talk about the books that Pi has stored in various boxes in his room or the ones that both of us still have in other people’s basements somewhere. And I’m buying new ones all the time.
I take the risk of seeming overly self-convinced and close to arrogant to add that we have books in three languages, four if you count the one Dutch book I ordered while I was high on hubris (I must have been high on something, because there’s no way I’m gonna finish this book EVER), five if you count the three or so comic books in Finnish I got from ebay and eight if you count the Japanese and Norwegian language course I bought and the Spanish beginner’s short stories I bought because I thought that Spanish was so like French that I would be able to read them. Yeah. Did I tell you about the Dutch book? Right. See, when I say that languages are my hobby? I mean it.
Bottom line is: we own books. A lot of them. And we’re book lovers, so they are well treated and look great in their IKEA home.
So, where are the books at other people’s places? Do they hide them? I just realized that other people might go to the library and get their books from there, a thing that I haven’t done in years. One reason is that I like to get amazon packages. Another reason is that most of the books I want to have are too new to get at the library and since I want them in English if possible, the chances for me to get them are not that good. So, the library sounds like a good idea in theory but doesn’t work for me at all. And that from a girl that once declared the local library her second home. I even got to advise other people on what to read because I was there every damn day. I was like part of the staff for at least one summer. But I guess those were the times before amazon and the joys of online shopping and before my aversion against reading books originally written in English in German. (I don’t, just for the record, read books by German authors in the English translation. I’m not that crazy.)
Okay, but even if they go to the library, they should have some books, shouldn’t they? And by some I mean a number of books great enough to fill at least one bookcase. Is that too hard? Because that’s approximately the amount of books I owned when I was 14.
I’m not saying that I think those people are stupid and don’t read, I’m just curious. Where are their books?
And don’t make me start about CDs. I admit that both Pi and I are music geeks and have an inordinant number of CDs. I haven’t counted mine lately, but I think I must own about 400 CDs and I’m very proud to say that only a real small number of those are burnt CDs. Pi says he owns about 1000 CDs and that’s likely to be possible since his collection needs about twice the space for storing, so that number sounds accurate. I can’t talk for Pi here, but with few exceptions I can honestly assure you that I have listened to each CD I own. I can’t afford to buy CDs and not listen to them at the moment anyway.
Yes, I am a whole album girl. If I hear a song I really like, I need the whole album. I have a well developed distaste for singles. I don’t get them. What are they for, why should I spend money on them? I hope I’m not pissing somebody off when I say that in my opinion singles are for teenagers (who don’t know better) and losers (who will never know better).
Experience showed me that on any given album the song that was taken from the album as a single (and therefor most likely the one that made me buy that album) is one of my least favorites in the end. There are exceptions, but few. That’s one reason why I want to get the whole thing. Another reason why in spite of all our money problems I still can’t help buying CDs every now and then is I just like owning it (like, you know, I like owning books). The booklet, the CD, the whole package. I want it.
Other people obviously don’t. It’s not as bad as with books, but on the other hand, I consider music and the blessings of a good CD collection even more valuable to my inner peace than literature.
Maybe my priorities are screwed up. Here I am, bitching about the fact that I haven’t had a decent vacation (like in going away) in nearly five years and at the same time I consider about ten different things I could order on amazon right now (such as Spellforce Add-On: Breath of Winter and Shadow of the Phoenix, Sex and the City Season 6, Petra Haden’s (and Bill Frisell’s) new CD, Winnie-the-Pooh in Latin, several books on linguistics,…)
I guess my main problem is that I like to own things. Not in that sick sense that I want to just have randomly chosen items, but that I like to get something I’m interested in and keep it. I’m not a renting person. I don’t like to rent. I loved the library when I was younger, but not so much now, I’ve never been a member of any video rental shop. I want to watch a movie any time I want. I don’t want to feel hurried to watch a movie just because if I don’t tonight I will have to pay more tomorrow. I like the books I read standing in my bookcase as my trophies of accomplished literature efforts.
I’m not oversensitive with my stuff. My CDs tend to fly around outside their cases, I don’t mind friends and relatives borrowing anything even for a long time and as long as they don’t break anything I don’t really care how they treat my things. It’s just books and discs. But I like them to be mine.
Basically, Pi and I are media guys. Our whole apartment is filled with media. I also have about 15 or more computer games and we have a medium sized collection of boardgames. Sometimes it seems to me that we are interested in way too many things already. I can’t keep up with what I want to read, watch, listen to at all. It’s the crux of being interested in many things that the average 24-hour day is too short for all the things you would like to do. It’s even frustrating at times, like ‚What? It’s 2 am already? But I wanted to at least finish this level… and then I wanted to read some more in my book! And see the latest episode of Joan of Arcadia!‘
And this is why I can’t understand how people get along without the number of books, CDs, movies and stuff that I would consider average. I love to come to a place the first time and browse the bookshelves and CD-racks, look for the DVDs and maybe even borrow the one or other because I want to read or see that, too. That hardly ever happens. It’s always other people borrowing things from us.
Yeah, because we are stupid enough to keep buying stuff.
Current mood: Getting headaches. Maybe that’s my punishment for being so self-absorbed and arrogant.
Listening to: Nothing.
