“By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book (Matthew), laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.”

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     I have long been a non-materialist in most respects, trying to avoid buying a lot of stuff, not just because I am cheap but because I do not need a lot of stuff to be happy, nor do I particularly value happiness, about which comedian Tim Minchin said, “If you think about it too much, it goes away, like an organsm”, I know I can be a bit insufferable, and like Mr. Minchin said, "Thank you for your indulgence.” But please suffer an unilluminated fool this chance to talk about some of his  most precious personal possessions with one distinction from Thoreau: Every person who has ever lived, including Thoreau and myself, has been a fool in many respects, however, material possession can insidiously harbor great meaning.

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  1. Black bear claw (right) and Ute medicine mage (left)

     My partner of 31 years, whose name comes from the Latin name of a Roman forest deity, almost immediately noted my bear-like qualities soon after we met. I am not sure why or if that was an attractive property, me being from The Clan of the Cave Bear. But for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, I can live and die with that. I have never tried to live among the bears, like that guy in Alaska who got eaten. I have had many close encounters of various kinds with bears in forests, a couple of which were almost unpleasant, including with my silvan deity. However, one encounter, about which I remember nothing else, did not occur in a forest and did not involve a live bear. I had told my father that I would love to have a bear claw (assuming its former owner was not dispatched solely for the purpose of providing me with a trophy). And lo and behold, the very next time I saw my father, he gave me one: It is like having a saint’s finger in a reliquary. My wife and I attended the annual Bear Dance during our honeymoon, I purchased a Ute medicine bag.

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  2. Cross® gold-plated pen and pencil set (which I have never used)

     On two separate occasions in two different state 3,000 miles apart, I was tasked with making a group of experienced nurses learn chemistry in order to keep their licenses due to rule changes. Like a forced rebirth. Understandably, people who had spent years skillfully saving lives do not appreciate being forced to go back to school…at night after work. But it was my job to make them earn their grades, a teacher does not help any student by giving her or him a passing grade out of sympathy. All nurses in both courses passed, after which we lost touch forever. However, at the second school on the last day of classes, Grace, Patricia and Renia asked me out to have a beer…and they gifted me a pen and pencil set, which sits on my desk at home, a reminder of how my students have illuminated my life.

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  3. Postcard with poem “An Autumn Reading for Andrea” by Ursula K LeGuin

     I have read little science/speculative fiction. However, when Le Guin’s only historical novel, Malafrena (ranked by goodreads.com as #37 among her 42 works), was inducted into the Library of America, I read it and contacted her with a short note of congratulations. I also purchased her book of essays, Words Are My Matter:

• “The central moral dilemma of our age, and of this very moment, now, is the use 

of non-use of annihilating power” (19),

and I began to explore her poetry. I also learned that Le Guin was the first translator for, and best friend of, Argentinian writer Angélica Gorodischer, whose works I have read. And because of her connection to Gorodischer, I found Sue Burke, an award-winning contemporary writer of speculative fiction and a translator of Gorodischer. Talk about striking a rich vein of real gold (or fool’s gold; take your pick; either is fine).

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  4. Royal Typewriter (ca. 1925 in Brooklyn, NY, purchased in Burbank, CA)

     I once had a friend who grew up in Mexico before and during the 1910 Mexican Revolution, his family worked for the legendary technological entrepreneur, Fred Stark Pearson; each’s life story reads like a magical realism novel. One summer, I had decided to spend the summer working in Costa Rica. I told my friend I was looking for a manual typewriter since I did not think I will have access to electricity. The next time I saw him, he gifted me a somewhat dilapidated typewriter:  “I used it as a cub report for the AP in San Francisco after I got out of college.” It has never been anywhere.

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  5. Trinitite (created by the world’s first atomic bomb blast in 1945)

     As an 18-year-old Midwestern farm boy, my future father volunteered to go to war. He would shoot down a kamikaze, been given the pilot’s samurai sword and write a poem about the young man he had killed. Later his ship shelled Nagasaki, which was turned into a barren wasteland. Then, as an adult in the age of no internet, my father found a dead son’s parents’ address in Japan and sent the trophy sword home. The photo above is of the Trinitite, a synthetic human-made mineral, created at a U.S. military base by the world’s first nuclear bomb in 1945; my father worked at that base after the war.

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  6. Trophy (typical cheaply made)

     The above is the only trophy I have, and one of the most curious objects in my possession of curious objects. In the early 1970s, I began to rebel; I was soon completely disgusted with the Vietnam War, a senseless Shakespearean tragedy that took more than 55,000 American lives, mostly young men who were forced to serve, be imprisoned, or flee like criminals. However from 1969 to 1972, I had a friend whose father and older brother were career soldiers, and Michael was destined to join them. He was also a fabulous clarinet player who often entered competitions. And since I knew how to play the piano, he would “guilt” me into being his accompanist, which meant I also had to play in public, something that I hated. Surely he must have known that we were doomed to drift apart. After I accompanied him for the third and last time, he had the trophy made to commemorate our dying friendship, a reminder of youthful harmony.

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  7. Sassafras root wood

     In 1975, I moved from the treeless Far West Texas, to the Piney Woods of East Texas, to study forestry at a university that was as far as possible from my parents, but still gave me in-state tuition. And probably my most transformative experience would being knowing an older young man from California, a Buddhist, shortly before he would savagely murdered in the apartment complex where we lived, because he asked a local bully to stop torturing a cat. I used to worry he would not forgive me for not visiting him in the hospital after the attack. However, later I later learned in Buddhism that neither sin nor forgiveness exist; that life is about relieving suffering. He reached Nirvana, no doubt. At least, I choose to believe that. In any case, the piece of sassafras wood above (once used in root beer) is my only memento from my days in the Deep South, and I like to think it might even hold a piece of Fred inside.

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  8. Contemporary Greco-Latin bust (plaster-based mixed media)

     Created by my own personal forest deity about the time we met 31 years ago. We met on a plaza in Madrid that commemorates the massacre of unarmed civilians by a genocidal dictator (sound familiar?). It is all a bit ironic since my ancestors are mostly Celts who battled the Romans, until they were crushed into submission by Romans and their deities. Creative writing teachers often tell us their students to avoid sentimentality. However, these last two works of art serve to remind me that even in a world of darkness, beauty is possible. And I think this piece would make an excellent obituary  some day.