Sitting on a high shelf, draped in cobwebs:
The OLD IDEA BAG. A brown paper bag labeled with a half-dried Sharpie, stuffed with notes and scraps of paper written on, accumulated over many months, and hastily crammed into this sack.
This is the most literal definition of trash to most people: a sack full of one person’s bullshit “ideas”. But here it is, collecting dust on what a person with pride of place would call a DISPLAY SHELF in the cabin they started renting thirteen years ago (was it really 13 years ago?) as a space to write in. Between a a container of CDs (archaic) and a dangerous kerosene lantern there’s no way in hell I’ll use (for fear of all my treasured moldering ideas going up in flames).
In a time when we’re debating the merits and dangers of AI, I’m reminded daily that IDEAS THEMSELVES ARE WORTHLESS. Right, but I’m going to DO something with these! I don’t want to forget this one, that one … these ones dozens hundreds thousands.
This is not THE (only) idea bag. Yes, it’s the only one labeled this way. But in fact I have binders and files and notebooks and banker’s boxes and drawers and shelves full of these notes’ brethren.
When I’m in the loft I can see this Old Idea Bag sitting right across from me like a kind of mirror. But I actually feel much less shame and guilt about it than other stuff I’ve accumulated and held on to. It’s kind of funny. I like its lack of pretension. I like what it what it represents. A simple form of hope. A little story by itself. A floppy container of jokes and sparks. A right-sized representation.
It is me. I am the old idea bag. Maybe I am staring at my tombstone and epitaph now in the form of a satchelized brown-paper bag-case. So what if this could end up being all I leave behind (plus a whole lot of mess that could be so much worse BUT ISN’T)?
I don’t know exactly why this makes me feel happy and hopeful, but just for today, at least, I’m so glad it does.