It's In The Cards: Read At Own Risk

There are times, many infact, that I find myself wondering just why I have insisted on accumulating so many small pieces of cardboard and plastic that bear the likeness of athletes and such. The money I spend to have and organize my cards, the percieved value that is associated with each one, and where it fits in my grand scheme of priority, all so easily seen as a fool's venture...a bilk, a scam.....but there is so much more.

These are the intangibles.
For me, the intangibles may differ from your average card-collecting adult, though Nostalgia only plays a limited role in mine.

It is the simplicity.

one card, one timeline, limited content, infinite perceptions.

why this card? why now?
I am in love with the fact that the answers to the previous questions are completely up to me.
I am in love with the fact that at any given time in my perilous life, I can get lost in a stack of mass-marketed, collector-persuant pieces of paper.

Buddhism teaches that one should not want, for to want and not recieve is the source of all dissatisfication and unhappiness.
Luckily, this does not play in my style of collecting.
I do not open boxes of Triple Threads, or Sterling, or Cases ( as I see has become hugely popular on many a web-based forum)
Therefore I am not unhappy when I don't pull a "white whale". I find it classically ironic that this term from Moby Dick is used in the hobby to describe what it does...hilarious in fact.
unspeakably perfect.

I love refractors though, and expertly painted art cards, and unique signatures.
so I keep all of the pieces of cardboard carefully in boxes, and trot them out to pick and re-pick all of my favorites and take stock of who's where and what not.

I do not plan on putting my kids through college with my autograph or Brewers or O's collections...but I do plan on having an office in my next house for me, my musical instruments, my glass art marbles, my Andy Goldsworthy book collection, my early graffiti mags, my sticker collection, my seashells, my rocks, minerals and crystals, my trainers, my fitted hats, my crates of vinyl, my photography studio, cassette recordings I made as a "sound designer" in my more delusional college days, my concert ticket stubs, my patch collection and my old coins.
hell's yes. now that is what I call success.
...only if to suceed would be to acheive total disillusionment through textbook escapist tendencies to keep my proverbial psychological "head" above water...I mean, we're all treading at some point...c'mon.

There are so many hobbies, habits and volitions in our culture (because I do believe that we are different if placed outside of said culture [read: bubble]) that can take us light-years away from our plodding lifestyle ryfe with receipts, automobiles and concocted remedies...

our cards, our trades, on our terms.
we like it this way because we make it our way.
we are the deciders. and we guarantee you we will not like everything.




So there it is. My Catharsis. the ebb to my bloggular flow. I am teaching my ass of back at the HS where I started, and for those of you who have been with me since anytime all the way back to January, Thank you. I know what those words mean, and I mean it. I will never let this blog die...but i might move to wordpress...

I would like to leave you with a pair of quotes from men far more eloquent than I...
Love,
Peterson




"Leisure is the mother of philosophy".
Thomas Hobbes

"Everyone of us is, even from his mother's womb, a master craftsman of idols".
John Calvin