Ephemera is like trash, but trash that you love.

After doing some collage grounds for art, I have decided to use a lot of little paper scraps that I have as integrated background for my art. Some things, like a little phone message ticket from my first highschool that has my name, the period, and whatever the purpose of me being called out of class for, were trash the day I got them and are only interesting to me as weird little mementos of the past. Other things, like my El Pollo Loco nametags, used to be functional and now they fill the same memento time capsuley messy category. So, in addition to the binder and box of paper ephemera I have kept, I am allowing myself an ephemera bin. It is about the size of a shoebox. I think it will be good to have it all in one place, since right now if I want to find singleton earrings, a fortune telling cellophane fish, odd lengths of ribbons, I have to look all over my drawers. So.
Ephemera is a weirdly irreplaceable substance. It is the stuff you would probably only be excited about if you found a bin of it after being a castaway, or having it sealed in the attic for decades. But at the same time, for me at least, it gets a little bit more precious the older it gets. Do I have a use for the coffin my $2 vampire fangs came in? Well, not so far. But I have only held onto them since October.

What a flattering picture. In this picture I am wearing entirely clothes that I found while cleaning, my nail polish has been partially scraped off from where I tested an old nail polish I found, you can see the corner of my art couch and my crappy brown couch, and my skin looks like it is May in Norway. It is Mai there, which is the same thing. I meant, if I were in Norway, experiencing Mai. Anyway, this is a picture of what I made my mom for mother's day.

I wonder whether my parents love me. I think that they used to. I think they think I am fun and interesting. But they are kind of busy with their lives. They have come to visit me 3 times, I think, in the 2 years I have lived away from home. They got rid of my room, rented it out, basically the month I moved out. But now there is a mattress in a loft. And Nicholas is much better at vocally demanding attention than I am. Mom talked about homeschooling us both (in an RV, traveling to museums and state parks for a year) but Nick is the one they actually homeschooled, and took to Utah for a family backpacking trip. ... That trip coincided with me desperately needing to move and having to figure it out by myself. With my cell phone turned off, because they did not pay it while they were gone. Also with no car.

No, I know, I am old and stuff. And independent. They don't know what my address is, and ask for it every time they mail something. It is really just that there is a distorted standard for parenting for Baby Boomers because so many make their children into their little projects and spoil them and whatever.

See, looking at all my ephemera and thinking about Mother's day and whatever has made me morose. Spring cleaning is in spring so the weather will make you happy. But it is still cold and wet here. Well, I guess I have to carry on cleaning.