David Murdock Column: On why this column doesn't have a title and other stuff

This column is a strange one, on two accounts.  First, I’m writing in the evening, which is highly unusual for me; I’m a “morning writer.”  Second, and perhaps more unusual — I don’t yet have a title for it.

Just a note here:  The title that y’all see in the paper is not always the title I wrote.  Titles are up to the editors of the newspaper.  Sometimes they use the one I wrote.  Sometimes they don’t.  Sometimes their titles are better than mine, so I always look forward to seeing it in the paper.

So, I’m on uncharted ground … and I can already see the effect of the terrain.  In the mornings, I tend to be more straight-ahead..  This column already feels more like stream-of-consciousness.  Almost like I’m typing what comes to mind … as it comes to mind.

As I look around my home office, I could write about just about anything on which my eyes light. Everything here has a story.

First of all, there are lots and lots of books.  Have I read them all?  No, of course not.  Does each individual book have a story?  Yes, of course.  Do I remember each book’s story?  No.  Sometimes, I look at a book and am surprised that I have it.  “Where did you come from?” I ask each book, but the books never answer.  And … of course, I don’t actually talk to the books out loud.  Not just yet.

The bookshelves also have lots of knick-knacks on them. I’m an inveterate collector of souvenirs.  Almost every visit I’d ever made to a museum or an exhibit ends with a trip to the gift shop. And, friends bring me souvenirs from their travels. There’s a far better chance that I remember the story of the knick-knacks than the books, to be honest.

The walls have prints of favorite artworks.  I don’t recall where I got most of them. There are also plaques and other sorts of things like that ― those I have more of a chance of remembering their origin, almost to the point of being able to say what year I got each one.  That’s a little bit easy, since many of them have the year engraved on them.

There are also some rather creative things displayed here, if I may say so myself. If I sound proud of my rather pedestrian arts-and-crafts … I am. For example, there are a few “homemade refrigerator magnets” on the filing cabinet by my desk. Those came about when I found a picture I liked in a magazine, cut it out, had it laminated, then mounted magnets on the back. A fun little hobby there for a while, a long time ago.

What I’m saying — and I would have said it much sooner had I been writing in the morning ― is that everything that surrounds us has a story.  Of course, books have a story, but every object we have in our homes and offices do, as well. There’s a reason we put them out for display.

And the display is not for other people; it’s for us.  I’ve noticed that people tend to display whatever makes them happy. Whatever has meaning to them. When questioned about almost anything in my house, I can tell its story — either where I got it or who gave it to me, when, and why.

I’m contemplating a new hobby, in fact, one that I don’t yet quite know how to pursue. I have always liked displays of butterflies on the walls. However, I really don’t want to kill the butterflies to do it. So, I’m trying to figure out a source for butterfly drawings — ones that look real — so that I can copy them and mount them, as if they were collected specimens.  I know that I’ll have to find some way to preserve the paper, and that’s what I’ve been stuck on for awhile.

Our “stuff” provides a map of our lives.  They record the journey.  (Ooh, there’s the title!)

Speaking of maps, I also have it in mind to draw maps … with a twist.  I’ve always admired J.R.R. Tolkien’s maps of his fictional Middle Earth.  He drew them to help him with the story. I know because I have a book of many of his maps ― it’s right over there, staring at me. They’re incredible. After I read the book, I got it into my head to do the same.

Here’s the difference — I was going to map my little corner of the world, with Attalla at the center. It occurs to me now that I could “map” many parts of my life.  I could map the bookshelves, for example. I could figure out some way to render the books as towns and cities, with roads between them.

For example, much of literature refers back to three main cultural sources:  the Bible, Shakespeare and Greco-Roman myth.  So, I could portray all of those books as major cities, with the roads being the connections to those three cultural sources.

That’s a strange way of thinking about my bookshelves, but what else should I expect from stream-of-consciousness writing in the evening?  Maybe I should write more often in the evenings.

David Murdock is an English instructor at Gadsden State Community College. He can be contacted at murdockcolumn@yahoo.com. The opinions expressed are his own.   

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: David Murdock on how our 'stuff' provides a map of our lives