minimalism

I'm not a minimalist. Far from it, in fact: I really like things. Like most people my age, I am trying to create my identity based on stuff. Material goods serve as manifestations of my interests, and without them, I am (or at least, I thought that I would be) an un-person. My idea of self is justified by objects: I like tea, I have a collection of tea cups. I like running, I have racing numbers taped to the wall of my bedroom. I like drawing, and I have excessive art supplies scattered across my desk. In the beginning, this seemed reasonable, but as time progresses (and I hopefully, to some extent, matured), I came to realize that some, if not most, of my things were extraneous. And, even though I could objectively identify how unnecessary so many of my possessions were, I could not begin to get rid of them. 

 

A slow panic is setting in as I prepare to leave home. Going to college is forcing me to prioritize and declutter. I ask myself the question: do I really need this? Increasingly, I find myself answering in the negative. In the past weekend, I pulled sixty books off the shelves of my bedroom and boxed them to donate. Over the past several months, I've been doing the same process with my clothing. These have not been easy tasks for me. I find my bookshelf is hugely indicative of my character, and by removing pieces from my shelves I feel that I am releasing parts of myself. I parted with several book series this weekend that I had adored when I was growing into pre-pre-pubescence. What part of my childhood was I choosing to relinquish as I packed the box and dragged it into the hallway? 

 

Sorting clothing is no easier. Now that I have finished growing, I have started to grow an extensive wardrobe of miscellaneous garments: shirts, pants, skirts, button-downs, sweaters, jackets. My penchant for thrifting has caused the contents of my closet to expand exponentially with each season. The slow accumulation of garments surprises me, as I can never truly conceptualize the amount of clothing that I actually possess until it is time to box it up and store it for the next year. Embarrassingly, I have run out of space to store my shoes. I threw away four pairs, among them several worn down pairs of running shoes, and the pair of ballet flats that everyday in the 8^th grade- the same pair I wore when I had my first kiss. I'm sentimental. Absurdly so. I pulled two trash bags full of clothing out of my room to donate, and haven't regretted it. 

 

Cleaning my desk and school shelves has been completely overwhelming. My older brother never got rid of his textbooks, at the urging of my mother, in the event that I would need them when I went through the classes later. When I followed him through school three years later, I took many of the same classes with many of the same teachers. However, none of the books were the same. Editions change over the years, and the textbooks that I already had were essentially worthless. So, when I graduated in June, I was left with a tall pile of defunct textbooks, most in duplicate. Required readings for eight collective years of English classes, and an inordinate amount of SAT prep books given to me by my brother and cousins and family friends. 

 

If you couldn't already tell, I feel the need to be over-prepared for things. I have saved my binders from almost every class that I took in high school, in the event that I would need to reference my notes later on. When I cleared out my shelves, my binders were the first to go. I went through them meticulously, pulling a few tests and essays that I wanted to keep, and recycling the rest. In a few subjects, such as French, I did decide to keep my notes. Even though I held onto some things, I was able to narrow down ten binders and countless two pocket folders overflowing with handouts, worksheets, and miscellany, into three concise binders. I recycled nearly 50 pounds of paper. (And yes, I am going to take a moment to repeat that: 50 pounds of paper. What was I thinking that made me think I needed to keep 50 pounds of paper? I routinely babysit children who weigh less than that.) From the shelves of required readings,I decided which I wanted to keep, and which I would box to donate. I brought the books to my room, and put them into my own personal library. In total, I took my desk and school readings from two shelving units into a single shelf.

 

As difficult as it was to do my first sweep, each successive purge has become easier for me. My room in still insulated with books, and I still have a large amount of clothing. But now, it has become easier for me to look at these items and judge their worth. I have a book here that I've never read or wanted to read, but it was a gift from X. I pull it from the shelves and put it in a stack to donate. I never liked the way this shirt fit me, but it had only cost this much money. I'll probably never wear it, but maybe somebody else will. It doesn't matter how much, or how little, something cost, if it serves no practical purpose. At times when I am cleaning out, I find it important to remind myself that I have what I need. I want what I want. I don't always need what I want.

sandman and the evolution of the graphic novel

In the year of my birth, issues of Sandman, a graphic novel written by Neil Gaiman, were serialized by Vertigo books in what would become the penultimate volume of the Sandman series. The Kindly Ones, as this 9^th collection would be named, consisted of issues 57-69, and was published in whole in 1996. I was two years old at the time, and only clever enough to tie my own shoes. Although I did not realize it then, Neil Gaiman’s series represented a landmark in the history of the graphic novel; Sandman became one of the most popular graphic novels of the 1990s and changed many of the preconceived notions about the graphic novel as a literary genre. The evolution of the graphic novel has been an ongoing process since its inception, and I have been fortunate enough to be able to witness many of the defining moments in its chronology in my own lifetime.

Sandman was written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by a constantly rotating group of artists. The series tells the story of the seven Endless, most closely narrating the life of the titular character Dream. Gaiman describes the Endless in a variety of ways, perhaps best through the words of Destruction in volume eight, Brief Lives:

The Endless are merely patterns. The Endless are ideas. The Endless are wave functions. The Endless are repeating motifs. The Endless are echoes of darkness, and nothing more... And even our existences are brief and bounded. None of us will last longer than this version of the Universe.

The Endless exist as the manifestations of universal experiences. Each of the seven Endless (Dream, Death, Desire, Destruction, Destiny, Despair, and Delirium, formerly Delight) personifies an aspect of the human condition. Gaiman’s ability to create such beautifully tangible manifestations of these experiences resulted in its popularity and transformative effects on the graphic novel.

The entirety of the graphic novel genre has the same wave function as the Endless; throughout history varying forms of sequential art have been used to convey narratives. Although only dubbed with the term graphic novel in recent history, examples of illustration portraying stories and legends exist throughout every culture and every time period. The Bayeux tapestry- portraying the Norman conquest of England, and the Egyptian papyrus scrolls- depicting the entry into the afterlife, are two examples of marriages between narratives and art. In the absence of written language, or in the absence of literate audience, pictorial cues have always aided the description of the greatest epics of our time. Building on this time honored tradition, the modern graphic novel has evolved and specialized around the world. From the bande dessinée of France, to the manga of Japan, graphic novels are a celebrated cultural phenomenon.

Today, graphic novels are capable of relaying entire stories in less time and often with less ambiguity than their non-illustrated counterparts. While both written language and literate audiences exist today, the driving force of instant gratification has caused a former measure of necessity to become a measure of convenience. However, a successful graphic novel does not sacrifice its story for its art; both aspects  are strongly linked and benefit the other, and neither can exist alone. The power of the graphic novel lies in its ability to show and tell the reader what its characters are thinking and feeling. When we see sadness, we react to sadness. Likewise, when we read about happiness, we react to happiness. The duality of the graphic novel doubly increases our understanding of the material that we are reading.

Today, in our own little ways, I think that we are each living graphic novels. We want our moments to be captured and captioned. Evolving forms of communication have undoubtedly aided us in our attempts to be read. We create chronologies of our lives across facebook, twitter, and blogs, making a complex lexicon of who we are at any given point in time. These digitalized versions of ourselves are preserved like chapters in a book, each with a convoluted story line and unlikable main character. Our desire to be read and remarked upon (or perhaps, rather, our desires to be remarkable) is truly an example of life imitating art. So we write another blog post, tweet another status, and upload another profile picture. Maybe it will gain us the literary criticisms of “lol!” or “babby gurl u look fine”, and maybe they won’t. But we’ll write another page regardless, sometimes because we love ourselves more than dynamic lettering and dramatic inking could ever hope to convey. And sometimes we write another page simply because (as Neil Gaiman wrote in Sandman, Volume 5: A Game of You) “everyone has a secret world inside of them. All of the people in the world, I mean everybody—no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world… hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.”