How I stopped worrying and learned to recycle my magazines; why I pulled them back out of the bin

A few weeks ago I was dorking out to prepare for my boyfriend's birthday and, since one of his presents was a gift certificate (to American Science and Surplus) I decided to tuck it into a nice card, and then decided I should make that card. I bought pretty, heavy papers, scallop-edged scissors, some stencils, an X-Acto knife and a cutting mat.

I used to love collage. It might have been my first craft love, somewhere in the same mix as beadwork. I never got very good at the latter (though I made some cool, funky necklaces) but I think I had a reasonable eye and hand for the former. In high school, and well into college, I spent many a Sunday knee-deep in cardboard (cut-up cereal boxes or the covers of last term's notebook) and old magazines, making postcards to send to my friends elsewhere.

So once I had a final product I liked enough to tuck into the envelope and call it good, I started thinking: What happened? When did I do this last and why did I stop?

Now, that middle question -- I didn't need to ask. My brain's a Collyer mansion. I remember everything. Every mean thing anybody said to me at any age (six, nine, twelve years ago or last week -- it doesn't matter), every kind deed or gesture or word. Like a lot of hoarders I spend time sifting and sorting these memories, weighing their significance, but so rarely discard one that when I discover I've forgotten something, I'm exhilarated.

I hoard tangibles too. Collage was a great excuse.

So when was the last time I sat down with a stack of magazines and a pot of rubber cement? It would have been 2002. Seven moves ago. The postcard I sent accelerated a correspondence and friendship that became a delightful, doomed relationship that's now a startlingly durable friendship. We've all muttered "there's dust on my guitar, you fuck" one time or another. Have I discovered another symptom of Just How Badly That Whole Thing Fucked Me Up -- or is that a vindictive reading of circumstance?

Five -- no, six -- of the seven moves took place in the year immediately after I made that postcard. Wasn't that why I stopped hanging onto magazines, to particularly interesting papers, to foil candy wrappers or what the hell ever? Wasn't I tired of the haul? Wasn't the financial and emotional chaos that catalyzed and accompanied those moves the real reason I dried up creatively? And after stabilizing quite a bit, after breaking the anxiety-laden hoarding habit, why take it up again?

But when I sat on my bedroom floor a couple of weeks ago contemplating stencils and layouts, collage wasn't about this nauseous fear of forgetting, or of discarding, not anymore. Once, I thought throwing things away was both wasteful and dishonest. It isn't. It's about revising. Keep what you need or love. Chuck the rest.

I take 2002, 2003. I keep the bleach-white Idaho sun, the walks from Sun Valley to Ketchum and the big, unleashed, well-behaved dogs wandering the sidewalks unattended. I cut away the cold entitlement of the children I worked with, but I keep its funnier manifestations. I cut away the nastiness of nearly every young employee on the resort, but I keep the boy I had two long, substantative talks with and never saw again. I keep some of the fall -- the rain-soaked bike rides to campus, the watery Portland sunshine and the old-friends-who've-just met euphoria. I discard my (now former) best friend's heightened silences and the way she eventually, unceremoniously dropped me altogether. I keep the spring.

I think: Why didn't I play this years ago, this game of keep this, chuck that? I'm not pretending none of it happened. I'm admitting I no longer need it.