Framing Objects, Not People
I have a couple of frames adorning the walls of my home and the shelves at work. Recently I had a sudden realization that all these arts that surround me, everything on display to make my space original and to reflect my personality were only of objects: I had framed reminders of the smallest accomplishments like the puzzles I solved, to something more valuable as my graduation cap with a personal dedication, or the page that has my first poetry on it. There’s also a keyring from my favorite city in a box frame sitting at my desk that I bought as a pair, one of which I gifted to my first love.
One could seem to wonder why I had no framed photographs of the people dearest to me, given the fact that I take a ton of photos of them. Maybe I think highly of myself and want to create an identity that is completely detached from others, someone who dwells only on their selfish goals and own ideas about life. Do I not find their faces worthy enough to decorate my walls with their unusually flawed beauty, or is it the perfection I crave for my exquisitely curated home?
It made me question if I did not value them as much as the pleasures and joys my trinket treasures found me or was it rather the opposite. I loved them to such an extent that the thought of having them in a pseudo-physical photo form would bring me more heartache and deepen my longing to be closer to them, cueing the miles of distance and the stretches of sea that binds us apart. I do not wish to be reminded of the times that once were but are not anymore. Whatever be the cause, I did not hold any photos or frames of my loved ones.
I instead collected all my mom’s special recipes and never let her food legacies be lost in vastness of cultural shifts, I would ask for endless stories to my dad that shall live forever even when we don’t, read the books and watch the movies recommended by friends just to understand them a little better. I always find it funny when people talk about the things they love, and for me, it is the hardest thing to do. I could be the misnomer here and trophy-collect the things I love, but talk only about the people I love. I will talk about them at length with new people I meet, about their likes and dislikes, the things in common between us, the things that are not. I would pick up habits borrowed from my social circle and walk around like a living archive of multiple personalities in one.
We frame our most prized possessions, and that is just what I do: “Frame Prized Possessions”. We ought not to possess any other being but ourselves, and so it’s only literally and figuratively me taking possession of the people in my life through my memories of them, by writing about them and continuing to swim in a pool of nostalgia. They live through my own values, my upbringings, lifestyle choices that are subconsciously influenced by them. Through a bunch of hand-me downs; posters, music CDs, magazines, or the old pottery sets that are given a new home, each one of them a reminder of my distant past and now a part of my new forming present. They are breathing in my clothes I wore for a special occasion, still carrying the scent of familiar places and people.
The only difference is instead from walls, their existence is hanging every which way from all my twenty something self.
Written By Julia Saha
