Here's
a sad confession: the first thing I do when I wake up is reach for my iPhone to
find out 1) what the weather's like; therefore 2) what I'll wear; 3) check
personal email; 4) work email - just to get a jumpstart on the workday; 5)
twitter...and now, deep breath: 6) my eBay app.
What this confession will tell you is that 1A) I'm too near-sighted to actually see what's happening outside my window; 1B) I'm too lazy to reach for my glasses to actually see what's happening outside my window; 2) I can't figure out what to wear standing in front of my closest -- I like to tell myself I gotta "feel it" without distraction (which of course is hooey, since 95% of my clothes are black – refer to the laziness point above); 3) I'm an optimist for thinking someone may have emailed me in the wee hours of the night. Usually it’s only my “A.Word.A.Day” email from Anu Garg – but it’s enough to get my brain moving; 4) I need to "warm" up with happy thoughts so I can deal with work email ‘cuz someone ALWAYS has emailed me during the night and 5) I need instant rewards for said work by reading someone’s fun tweet…. Bringing me to 6) eBay, which I’ll tackle shortly – bear with me.
So on
this first day of Spring (hurrah!) I found out from my trusted iPhone that it
was snowing (HUH?!!). I bypassed my usual above-mentioned ritual to grab my
glasses to confirm that yes, indeed, it was snowing. Winter’s parting
finger. After completely
reassessing my wardrobe (surprise! black sweater and jeans), realizing I was
going to be late for an 8:30 meeting with my boss, getting my word of the day
(“overslaugh,” verb tr. 1. To pass over someone in favor of another, as in a
promotion. 2. To bar or to hinder) and reading “glopdemon’s” tweet about the
impotent rage of a car-bound Chihuahua, I still managed to sneak a peek at the
items I’m “watching” on eBay.
Here’s
the weird thing – since discovering the eBay app for my phone, I’ve found it an
incredibly addictive creative outlet. Creative, you say? Oh yes, Grasshopper...
Ok, full disclosure, I first went on to look for a very specific item. I saw a woman in a local bookstore wearing the most fabulous light grey Persian lamb coat with a matching grey mink collar. Where else are you going to find something like that except on eBay?? Especially now that the Chelsea flea market is all but dead.
This search reminded me that I wanted to get another antique black butterfly pin. (My mom’s nickname
for me is “butterfly” … ain’t that cute? Well, actually, NO. She means it in
the sense of a directionless, flitterer. I now realize this is exactly the artist's entitlement, so I like to occasionally wear these jet black brooches. Usually in clusters, as if they’re
swarming, menacing, about to get up in your face with their flapping black little wings...)
But I digress, from the butterfly pins, I found real jet pieces. Having no idea what jet was (a fossilized material), I looked further and found wonderful jewelry carved from “whitby jet,” a type of jet found in England and popularized by Queen Victoria as part of her “mourning” jewelry.
That’s right -- grief bling.
(Aren’t we humans amazing? We can fetishize anything.) So now I’m off to the
races: mourning brooches, lockets, necklaces, bracelets – all carved from jet.
But wait! I found a whole other body of mourning jewelry made from human hair.
Delicately braided brooches, bracelets, little lockets holding hair locks as
part of the hair bracelets. Damn, this is interesting! It's the beginning of Spring and all I want to see are black, mourning objects. Remnants of sadness in this season of rebirth...por quoi? I don't know, the searching is too yummy-fascinating to stop...
As a counterpoint, I’ve also started looking at costume jewelry made from white glass – molded flowers, leaves, beads. To me it looks like carved milk; I can imagine how cool they are on the skin, like milk washing down freshly-baked cookies. Fresh, white light…
So
have I spent what’s left of my dwindling 401K? Surprisingly not. I’ve
half-heartedly bid on a few things (lost pretty much every time) but I’ve found
instead that these images and descriptions have captured my imagination in the
most unexpected of ways.
How weird that a business devoted to capitalize on the feelings of consumption, of the thrill of the winning bid, has become a catalyst for my creativity in a way that’s so far removed from buying all this stuff. Or that maybe it’s about a different type of ownership, more like the way inspiration is owned as we manifest it in our thinking and our actions -- by becoming part of the journey our own personal “narratives.”
I like that thought – that these transactions are not mediated by money (bye bye, Paypal!) but instead mediated by the currency of our curiosity. I wonder if anyone else uses eBay like a creative tool. (I save the most interesting pieces into the “watching” category so I can pick up the thread of my creative sleuthing at any time.) It'd be great if we could all see and share these inspirations or threads of inquiry. Maybe this is something delicious could be used for? Hmmmm... Thoughts?
