Vide-Grenier (Garage Sale)
06.29.2013
If, as the French Christian mystic and philosopher Simone Weil said, "absolute attention is prayer," think of all the objects we have prayed over, by bringing our attention to them at the moment we chose them, and the attention we paid them when we held them dear.
And now those individual prayers rise in chorus at the annual neighborhood garage sale in our tiny public square, Place Contrescarpe, and the narrow streets that run downhill from it. It's a smorgasbord of the things we once held dear, or even sacred.
We sellers wish their numinosity might spark in someone else's heart; or we simply wish, on a more mundane level, that we can extract a stray euro from a once-loved, now-unwanted object. It may seem heretical to conflate mundane consumer goods with the sacred, but there are those who say that capitalism has elevated the cult of consumerism to the status of a religion.
Wherever you stand on that argument, we invite you to witness our neighbors, with some of their now-desacralized objects, their discarded prayers, and imagine each booth a shrine.
Reader Comments (11)
I too love these events. Your insights help explain why.
NOT FOR SALE
As he came into the town he
noticed boxes and boxes of
long-stemmed and short-stemmed roses, all
colors, red, violet, orange, snow-white,
vendors on sidewalks, vendors from
horse-drawn carts, vendors in vans — piles and
piles of roses, and he thought,
“Ah, what a romantic race, a
people at last for whom
beauty is a mode of communication, and
on such a grand scale!”
He didn’t know, poor man, that it was
because of the Rose Beast, who
comes into town at dusk and has to have
hundreds and hundreds of roses to eat in order
to not eat their tenderest children,
a monster who
thrives on beauty but eats it
savagely, who depends on the
mystical form of the rose, but only
to fill his stomach.
To see him
grab bunches of
gorgeous rainbow roses and push them,
bud first, into his
gaping jaws, is
indescribably horrific. And
more horrific still are the looks on the vendors’ faces
as they’re
forced to gaze into that slobbering maw until
he’s eaten his fill.
As the man slowed his car and pulled to the
side of the road and got out to buy a
bunch of long-stemmed roses that had
caught his eye, and walked up to the
vendor with a bill in his hand, he
realized something strange was afoot. Because
the vendor looked up at him with a
long mournful gaze, a rose-shaped
tear in each eye, and said:
“Sorry...
Not for sale.”
____________________________
from Chants for the Beauty Feast, The Ecstatic Exchange, 2011)
Dear Kaaren and Richard,
I loved your pictures and your captions. Which themselves are a sort of bazar.
I love Babar in the cups.
I love the little round art nouveau piece on the right.
Everything there was gotten because someone thought it would satisfy them. The getting did. The having didn't.
Now someone else will do it.
But it is good to get things in order to pass them on in this way. Why not?
Acquisition is a great human good and pleasure and drive. Why not? Relinquishment is another.
Dissatisfaction stirs things up.
The still point of the turning world is all very well and good, but one must not forget that it would not exist were the world not turning.
You give us the world turning.
You give me pleasure.
I open up your Paris Play for another gleam of a life elsewhere. Always another and another.
How well you do for me.
Thanks,
Bruce Moody
P.S.: Who wrote the fine rose poem?
Dear Bruce:
We are pleased to bring you another edition of "As the World Turns," Paris style. Your comments are always trenchant, or delightful, or both. Or delightfully trenchant.
The poet is the redoubtable Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, who often graces these comment pages with his wonderful works. Were we not both poets, who already hold the job, we would make him laureate of Paris Play.
Much love,
Kaaren and Richard
Dear Susan:
Merci!
Much love,
Kaaren and Richard
Daniel:
Again you provide a grace note. Food for thought. We are grateful. And note the fan letter for you from Bruce.
Much love,
Kaaren and Richard
Dearest Kaaren and Richard:
Your adjective made me run to the dictionary to remember what “redoubtable” actually means. First time I’ve gotten that one, but it goes with the utter generosity of your site here and yourselves, and the endlessly welcoming spirit. I pause before posting a poem, hoping I’m not obtruding, but your welding of so vivid sights and so apt words is so exquisite it seems to urge and inspire contributions… and the attendees so, well, attentive, it’s all like smells emitted from a great French bakery… can’t resist going in and having a taste… then leaving a tip. As always, thanks, and blessings on its continuation.
(And I assume you know this poem from Rimbaud's Illuminations, Ashberry titles as "Clearance," which I hesitated to suggest due to the first line, but one translator gentlier translates as "pawnbrokers")
SOLDE
À vendre ce que les Juifs n'ont pas vendu, ce que noblesse ni crime n'ont goûté, ce qu'ignorent l'amour maudit et la probité infernale des masses, ce que le temps ni la science n'ont pas à reconnaître :
Les Voix reconstituées ; l'éveil fraternel de toutes les énergies chorales et orchestrales et leurs applications instantanées, l'occasion, unique, de dégager nos sens !
À vendre les Corps sans prix, hors de toute race, de tout monde, de tout sexe, de toute descendance ! Les richesses jaillissant à chaque démarche ! Solde de diamants sans contrôle !
À vendre l'anarchie pour les masses ; la satisfaction irrépressible pour les amateurs supérieurs ; la mort atroce pour les fidèles et les amants !
À vendre les habitations et les migrations, sports, féeries et comforts parfaits, et le bruit, le mouvement et l'avenir qu'ils font !
À vendre les applications de calcul et les sauts d'harmonie inouïs ! Les trouvailles et les termes non soupçonnés, possession immédiate,
Élan insensé et infini aux splendeurs invisibles, aux délices insensibles, - et ses secrets affolants pour chaque vice - et sa gaîté effrayante pour la foule -
- À vendre les Corps, les voix, l'immense opulence inquestionnable, ce qu'on ne vendra jamais. Les vendeurs ne sont pas à bout de solde ! Les voyageurs n'ont pas à rendre leur commission de si tôt !
To elevate the mundane, to realize there is probably no such thing, to link poetry and philosophy to a sidewalk sale....it's why I read Paris Play.
A mini-vacation and food for the soul.
Kaaren & Richard,
Ditto on Anna's comments.
Recently I've been relinquishing now-desacralized objects to Goodwill and Salvation Army. As I change so does my view of my acquisitions. At some point I considered those objects as affirmative and yes, even sacred. The Tibetan sand mandala comes to mind; the way it engenders appreciation of the beauty of now without attachment to it.
I found that the photos of each shrines theme held a certain poignancy. Having this visual display of our tendency to accumulate, only to later want to unburden ourselves is revealing and liberating.
There are treasures in boxes on high shelves and in my closet. Recently, I found stacks of snail mail correspondence between my dad and me. Today I discovered a cute new top in my closet, which I've never worn. It's prominently displayed and ready to go for the appropriate occasion and mood.
Much love,
Marguerite
Love the "garage" sale --I am slowly getting rid of "things" that I thought were so important and now aren't, but I also have some many little things people have given me-- they have memories attached to them but are in cupboards etc-- they are hard to part with, but will take pictures and hope someone else will enjoy that which I part with.
Love Paris Play. Happy 4th to you both
Love,
Betsy