Object Permanence Project, Week Five

Papers. My life is full of papers. They clutter, they pile, they practically drift, sometimes. I don't care much about most of them. Here's a picture of the one I care the most about. (I deliberately took this at a distance so our names would not be visible.)

This is our Quaker marriage certificate. It is ridiculously huge because I was a very new Quaker when we were married and did not realize that they are usually rather smaller.

Our wedding vows are written down here, and underneath R. and I signed our names, followed by the names of everyone present who witnessed our marriage. My sister in law did the calligraphy, R. made the frame, and though it's too tiny to see, I painted chains of autumn leaves in the corners.

This is the most precious piece of paper I own. I would rather lose our state marriage paperwork than lose this. It's the first thing that goes on the wall in a new house, and it will always hang prominently wherever we may live.



I got rid of all this stuff.

It wasn't trash — I don't photograph straight-up trash for this series — but in contemplating our marriage certificate it suddenly became easier to let go of five partially-used notebooks, two empty binders, old periodicals, scrapbooking materials that would never make it into a scrapbook, magazine clippings I will never read again...

This project is helping me with perspective for sure.