Is the Refrigerator a Door to the Human Psyche?

I know it is fun to get an otherwise unobtainable picture of a person from a glimpse at the interior of that person's medicine cabinet, but what of the refrigerator, purring away all day, making ice cubes without complaint?

Are we overlooking the literary equivalent of a new planet?

Would we have been as likely, say, to read a particular author's book if we'd had an early peek?

Here is mine, in all its naked vulnerability. The idea for this was planted some while back when photographer Shawn Gust
posted a shot of the inside of his refrigerator, showing its content: a single bottle of beer. I had already come to admire his images to the point of wishing I could cyber-port a case of something reflecting his taste. It jumps away from the subject to observe that he does moving portraits of people at work. Such artistry deserves beer. It also inspires. I, who could never hope to achieve the poignant quality on the faces of Shawn's subjects, may on the other hand have a feel for the odd jar of olives and the carton of cottage cheese.

Index

One of the first things I turn to when inspecting a work of nonfiction for possible intimacy is its index.

Friends tease me about this, suggesting that the practice is of a piece with reading the final paragraphs of a novel before I have made a proper beginning.

Tease away, dear ones. An index is not merely a guide to the what of a book; it is the if of a book, as in if salient features appear in the text at all, and possibly whether the features appear but are as buried as the reason and logic in a Republican's campaign promises.

Over the years, curiosity, financial need, and approaching deadlines have motivated me to undertake the compilation of an index. Friendship, too. I've slipped in a few for Barnaby Conrad, who would not think to index any of his writing, and one for Brian Fagan, in the belief that it would help me retain in active memory even more of the facts and theory of a book I had edited.

In a sense, an index is the literary equivalent of a detailed map through a mine field. Although it has not been done, except to whimsical effect by Paul Theroux, I would like to try my hand at indexing a novel.

Why all this seeming prologue about index? Last night's post addressing among other things what can be learned about a person from examining the interior of that individual's refrigerator could easily be applied to the use or failure to use index labels on our blogs. What is there to be learned about the signposts and connective dots an individual leaves as a trail of crumbs to the witch's house?

Might it not be an effective approach for the writer to review a work in terms of what its index would reveal? Would doing so provide a sense or direction--or reveal a lack of one? Are we working to provide access--our own as the creator or someone else's as reader--to the work?

What are our component parts--beyond, that is, the genome? Ideas, concepts, memories.

I live in a part of the world that is constantly reinventing itself. Saturday evening, driving southward from my workshop near Palo Alto, I passed what was probably the spot in Nipomo where Dorthea Lange took the photo of that woman and child that transformed Lange's memory and probably immortalized that woman. Her child would very well be alive, somewhere, possibly married into migrant labor as were her parents, just as possibly a grandmotherly, matriarchal sort from a Central Valley family. There are traces everywhere of architectural, social, political, and spiritual changes. What was once a splendid Greek-Italian grocery whose mouth-watering scents alone could keep you nourished all day is now a goddamned Verizon store. A famous Chinese restaurant with awful food and great drinks is gone; an Italian restaurant with unrelentingly awful Italian food and an unrelentingly spirited ambiance is now a dress shop. A great pool hall and a Spanish-language theater on lower State Street have become targets of some speculator's opportunity. Even one of the great smash-and-burn speculators has moved on, his eyes peeled for newer targets the way a red-tailed hawk watches for lunch.

We are constantly migrating through relationships, careers, thoughts, projects, our senses assailed, beckoned forth, coaxed. An index would be helpful.

When I was just beginning my career in publishing, the head of a major library system reminded me when I sought to gain her order for a project I'd edited, "An index would have made all the difference."

Who is this individual who has come before you since March 1 of this year? Forget the About Me details. Read the index.

The Things You and You and You Carry

Sometime back, during the editing process on one of Brian Fagan's archaeological adventures, we thought it interesting to make special note, a kind of pre-historic take on Tim O'Brien's fine novel, The Things They Carried. This may turn out to be O'Brien's most iconic work, having as its dramatic spine a laundry list of what some of the American soldiers involved in the Viet Nam War, carried about with them in addition to the military ordinance with which they had been issued.

In the Fagan work, it came to me that we could get a better sense of the life and times of our forbears if we knew something about the things they carried with them, or as Fagan put it, what was in their tool kit. At one point, in the stone age, a major item was called a burrin, a chunk of flinty rock from which chips could be struck for use either in starting fires, as a projectile point, and even as a knife or scraping tool.

The notion came to me that we were discussing the precursor of The Swiss Army knife, a designation that found its way into not only Fagan's text but, over the years, several other studies of what life was like, way back then.

As Brian produces text on his new venture, a comprehensive portrait of the so-called Cro-Magnon people, it came to mne that we were at another comparison point, a garment made from sheep or some other shaggy-coated animal. Voila, the precursor of the Ugg boot, which comparison Fagan's new publisher has already slathered over.

And these paragraphs become prologue to my wonderment and speculation about the things writers carry about with them. For my part, there is one or more fountain pens, selected at whim from a cigar box repository of favorites, including a Mark Twain model from the American penmaker, Conklin; a Sailor from Japan,with one of the most deliciously flexible nibs ever; an Italian Ancora, which is hefty in a reassuring way, enhanced by mother-of-pearl side panels, a gift from ENK; another Italian pen, the Montegrappa; an impulsively given Mount Blanc from Steve Cook; as well as another choice Aurora which also has a nice heft if a bit of a scratchy nib. With these tools is a pocket-sized Moleskine note book and two smaller pocket-sized books purchased in a magazine stand at Heathrow, plus untold piles of plain index cards as well as those with enough information printed on them to qualify as super-large business cards. Not to forget a pocket knife.

This intrigues me to the point where I will start asking writers what they carry with them as a matter of course because it has already come to me to begin pestering people for permission to take photos of the insides of their refrigerators. I know Fagan has an inordinate number of carrots in his 'frige because of his wife's dealings with rescue rabbits, and true Brit that he is, he has confessed to vegemite and Patum Peperium, that somewhat salty anchovy relish,well-known as "The Gentleman's Relish."

What grand mysteries one can learn of one's friends from seeing the insides of their refrigerators.

None of this would, I think, have occurred to me if I had not come by a camera, which in fact produces entirely new levels of curiosity about the world and its denizens.