Everything Has Its Price

[poliphilo]

We're sending a number of items to auction. They're things I'd come to regard as family treasures- but which nobody liked very much, or ever looked at- antique ornaments, boxes, trinkets- most of them carrying an association with my grandmother who used to have them displayed in her house- and I had an exaggerated, sentimentalised idea of their worth. Yesterday the auction house published the catalogue for the sale- and there they are, with a guide price printed under every image; "£20-£30 for this, £80-£150 for that- and it's as if someone someone had spoken words of power and exorcised them- turning them from a burdensome, faintly numinous inheritance into mere bits of stuff.

There's nothing like putting a price on a thing- especially if it's a fairly low price- to rob a thing of its mana. They're off my hands now- and what I'm feeling is a mixture of regret and relief.