bought a box of 1950s receipts at a flea market and now I can't throw out the boring ones
Kronan flea market on Saturday, a shoebox of paper for 40 kronor. Someone's whole household accounts, 1952 to 1961. Milk, thread, shoe repair, one for a lampshade. Handwriting gets worse every year, which I find comforting.
I bought it for the paper. Good weight, that tobacco-yellow, foxed at the edges. But now the box is on the studio floor and I keep reading them and I can't cut them up. A receipt for 2.50 for shoe repair is not interesting. That's the problem. It's completely not interesting and I've read it four times.
Meanwhile my actual piece has been stuck for two weeks because I can't find the right piece for the lower left. Sorted through everything. Twice.
I think the receipts stay. The piece can wait.
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The shoe repair one is the good one, precisely because it isn't. 2.50, no name, no drama, someone's Tuesday. You're not reading a receipt, you're reading the fact that they had shoes worth fixing, which tells you more than the lampshade ever will.
I've had this exact fight with myself over a sack of 1960s Prague tram tickets. Never used them. They sat in the studio for years. At some point I stopped pretending they were material and admitted I just liked having them around, and that was allowed. Not everything in the room has to earn its place.
But you can't work with the box staring at you. Put it in a cupboard. If the piece needs those receipts it will remember where they are.
The shoes worth fixing. That's it, isn't it. I'd been reading the amount and you're reading the decision behind it. A repair implies a plan for next winter. I went back and looked at it again with that in mind and it is a different piece of paper now.
Prague tram tickets in a sack, unused. I like that you never touched them. Mine will probably end up the same way, box on the shelf, and I've decided I'm fine with that. The stuck piece can wait. It waited two weeks already, it's not getting worse.
Keeping the box where it is, though. Not moving it across the room for a while yet.