Such A Burden
Sep. 9th, 2023 08:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo A sensible thing Ailz said yesterday. "Who do you keep all these pictures of people you didn't particularly like?"
I don't have a good answer. Except that I feel it's a duty that's been laid on me.
Well fuck that!
We have no duty to the dead. Or do we? No, I think not. If they leave stuff lying around it's entirely up to us whether we bin it or sell it or stick it in a museum.
And when we die we should expect our stuff will be treated in exactly the same way.
I had a dream that we had taken my mother, in her wheelchair, down to the Meeting House. When we got there we found we'd forgotten something we'd be needing and we'd have to go all the way home again, in the rain, to fetch it. Would we have to wheel my mother with us there and back?
Oh, the past is such a burden. But only if we let it be.
A scene from The School For Scandal comes to mind, where the good-heartred rake, Charles Surface, is cheerfully selling off the family portraits in order to pay his debts. He is being very cheerful about it- and suitably flip and disobliging about his ancestors. What an example to us all!
I don't have a good answer. Except that I feel it's a duty that's been laid on me.
Well fuck that!
We have no duty to the dead. Or do we? No, I think not. If they leave stuff lying around it's entirely up to us whether we bin it or sell it or stick it in a museum.
And when we die we should expect our stuff will be treated in exactly the same way.
I had a dream that we had taken my mother, in her wheelchair, down to the Meeting House. When we got there we found we'd forgotten something we'd be needing and we'd have to go all the way home again, in the rain, to fetch it. Would we have to wheel my mother with us there and back?
Oh, the past is such a burden. But only if we let it be.
A scene from The School For Scandal comes to mind, where the good-heartred rake, Charles Surface, is cheerfully selling off the family portraits in order to pay his debts. He is being very cheerful about it- and suitably flip and disobliging about his ancestors. What an example to us all!
no subject
Date: 2023-09-09 08:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-09-09 09:26 am (UTC)I'm fascinated by the past but not particularly the past of my own family.
And isn't it the case that almost all of us are descended from Charlemagne?
no subject
Date: 2023-09-09 11:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-09-09 12:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-09-09 02:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-09-09 02:34 pm (UTC)Huh. I wonder if you feel that way because you know so much about your own past?
I know next to nothing about the history of my own family, so I find the photos, papers, mementos, & things you are hurling bin-ward quite fascinating and worthy of preservation. 😀
no subject
Date: 2023-09-10 05:03 pm (UTC)