Watchmen, attics and unwilling clean slates
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The attic I've been working out of for years now is empty; all the books, papers and assorted gewgaws have been piled up in the spare bedroom in readiness for the plasterer who's coming this morning to render the walls into a state of blank loveliness.
It's been intriguing going through my assembled lifetime of crap and books and working out what to keep, what to bin. I even discovered proof of my secret past as a comics nerd - a run of Watchmen first printings, half of which are signed by Alan Moore being the prize of the collection and proof that I trekked to the UK Comic Art Convention a fair number of times as a moody teen. I'm older now, though. "Hell, I have the collected edition," I thought. "I'll put these on eBay." So I did - one should always attempt to profit from the past, literally or figuratively. This neatly combines the two - and it surely means I'm moving on.
Except, now, I don't want to sell them. They're mine! They may have lurked in the attic in little plastic baggies for 22 years, but they're mine in all their pristine shinyness. I loved them enough to lock them away and let them only exist as a particle of comfort at the back of my brain. And I apply this to all my things - it's the security blanket approach: "I loved this book/CD/comic/7 inch single and I must keep it near me!"
My girlfriend despairs - if she had her way, we'd get rid of everything bar my papers, poetry and a carefully selected number of non-poetry books and comics. Either that or live in a house large enough to have a dedicated library into which my somewhat obsessive nature about paper - bound or not - could be poured. I know I've got to whittle down my stuff - just from the sigh the attic floor gave when the last box of books was removed and it sprang back into a less bowed shape. We've compromised - I'm getting rid of 300 books, a load of comics and about half of the paper I've kept (very carefully sorted through to make sure no poems or drafts of poems escape). And it feels good standing in an attic that is as much head-space tabula rasa as it is room to work in.
But the Watchmen auction nags at me, pains me. It appears I'm hopelessly addicted to the mud-spattered state of mind that has sustained and restrained me for most of my life. Still, it's too late to pull the eBay auction, so all I can hope is that the signed Watchmen go to someone who'll love them a little more proactively than I did...
You can find out if they do by clicking here.
