A Short History of the Stuff I've Bought

When I look around my apartment, I can't help but notice how few things I've purchased for myself. Almost everything permanent (ie, not food and clothing) is secondhand or a gift. I was going to bore you with the details of what has been given to me over the years, but halfway through the list I realized I was boring myself. So I will spare you that particular torture!

Suffice it to say, most of my stuff was at one point the property of my mother, father, brothers, sisters-in-law, grandparents, friends, etc. The things that were gifts just for me are, of course, treasured for the thought that went into them, and the things that are second hand from these people are equally treasured, as I can't help but attach good memories to the objects through their association with those I love who used them first.

The whole point of this list though, is to highlight the things that I did buy for myself. Not the little insignificant things, like rings for the shower curtain...but the bigger ticket items that made a dent in my bank account for which I have no justification. These are not basic necessities; I bought them because I wanted them...there aren't many.

These are not listed in chronological order, but in order of importance to me, from least, to most.

1. Silver Hookah. I bought this from the Turkish booth at my favorite of summer festivals: Heritage Festival in Hawrelak Park. It's beautiful (though currently badly tarnished). I've only used it once, but it looks gorgeous on my desk, with the hose wrapped around my lamp. It brings back wonderful memories of both my university experiences, as well as my time at the festival with my dear friend Stef, which has become something of a yearly ritual. I don't really use it, but it still makes me smile when I look up at its intricate etching.

2. Acoustic Guitar. I used to play around on my mother's piano, and got to a point where I felt a deep love and affection for that instrument. However, though my mother has said I can have the piano, I have no place to put it, and no money to invest in its repair. So, missing music in my life, but not really wanting to buy an expensive piano since I technically already have one, I went to Long and McQuade and bought a guitar and started to teach myself how to play. I am currently at Level: Excruciatingly Awful. No really, I'm pretty bad. On the upside, I've started singing with more confidence, in order to drown out the clunking noises I make with the guitar. And however unimpressive my playing may be to me, it still makes me happy to play...although I don't play with enough regularity to grow calluses, and it doesn't take long for my fingers to wimp out on me.

3. Bright Red KitchenAid Lift-Stand Mixer. Ooooooh baby....Aside from one particularly hot pink bra, this is the sexiest thing I own. Normally something like $450 dollars at a place like Sears, Costco let me have this one for $199.99...and I love it. A lot. Guh...Excuse me...we need a moment alone....

4. So the last and most cherished thing I bought for myself isn't so much a thing as a collection. A collection of books, housed on shelves that I didn't buy (thanks Mom and Dad). Now, I won't pretend that I bought every single book on here, plenty of them were gifts...but for the most part, this is MY baby. This is where my heart is. These books are what really turn my apartment into a home instead of just a space I rent. The collection is a labour of love that started the day I gathered my loose change together so I could buy A Wrinkle in Time at a school bookfair and will end the day I stop breathing. When I look at these shelves, I see my life laid out; my interests, my loves and passions, the stages of my education. I see the way I've changed, the things I've left behind and the things I look forward to based on the changing genres of these books. I can remember how I felt upon first reading many of these. Some of them I bought and haven't read yet, but every one of the them is magical to me, and says something about my values and my character, as well as my interests. Not for a second have I looked at these books and thought, "Well, that was a waste of money."

Well, that's it. That's the list.

See, it's not that I don't like stuff. I really enjoy beautiful objects or useful machines (lord knows I salivate every time I see a Kitchen Aid pasta roller attachment), but I don't need a lot of stuff around me. When I stand in a home decor or appliance store, I look at everything and wish I had one of each awesome thing I see. But I don't buy those things, and it's not just that I don't have the money. It's that when I go home, to my adorable little apartment, I don't feel that I am lacking anything. No, I didn't pick out any of my own furniture, and no, I don't own a chef's knife, and if I should make pasta it would be with a rolling pin...because I somehow have two or three of those...not really sure how that happened...but my lack of fancy gadgets has in NO WAY stopped me from producing amazing food in my teeny tiny kitchen, and even the rarity of personally chosen home decor objects has not stopped me from using the gifts and second hand items I've received to create a space that is fundamentally Brenna: full of color and warmth.

Teaching me to think for myself was probably your first mistake...

I love living in the city.

This came as a surprise to me, based on my country upbringing. And, considering how often my parents *hint* that I should move back to the country, I think it came as a surprise to them as well.

But, having given it a little deeper thought (which I am generally in the habit of doing) I came to a few theories as to how a girl raised exclusively on a farm in the middle of northern Alberta should come to feel so at home with the hustle and the bustle of a city.

I blame my parents.

My parents were not born and raised on farms. Though they certainly have stories to tell about visiting their relatives in the country, they were both raised in a city, and lived in cities as adults, and there's no way their urban lives didn't influence the way they raised their children. So even though they eventually moved to the middle of nowhere, they still hadn't totally assimilated to country life by the time I came around.

When they would cook foods with Indian or Asian influences, they'd tell stories about the restaurants they'd been to in Vancouver, and the experiences they'd had with those people and foods and tastes.

When we sat in the evenings, reading in the living room, it was CKUA radio in the background, bringing together music from every corner of Canada, of the world, of time, in every musical genre imaginable.

We watched the Edmonton News in the evenings, and then the fabulous Canadian political satire shows, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, and the Royal Canadian Air Farce. When I was bored, I'd pick a book out of the library, from the books that my parents had accumulated over the years.

In short, my parents taught me to appreciate the variety and weirdness that exists in our world, whether they knew that's what they were doing or not. In foods, in books, in musical genres, in cultures, they taught me to seek out things that were different from what I already knew, to expand my own mind, and to learn from all these things.

Now...can you guess where (rural vs. urban) you can find a wider variety of weird shit?

I can't blame my love of the city entirely on my parents, though. Some of that has to be my own personality. For all they taught me to appreciate weird things, they could never force me to love them.

But I look around myself, standing in the middle of things like the Edmonton Street Performers festival, or the Heritage Festival, or the Fringe Festival, and the crush of people (weird people) and music (weird music) and the smell of food (weird food) makes me so inexplicably happy. That there exists so much in the world that I don't understand is exciting to me.

And even the people that live here that match me, demographically speaking, who speak the same languages and eat the same foods and listen to the same music and read the same books and have the same color skin and the same genitalia and sexuality as me...even these people, who match me statistically, are not living the same life that I am. We are totally different souls, and I am reminded of this all the time in the city. Every time I walk to work, watching the traffic roll past me, I wonder about the stories of the people in the cars. Or every time I sit on my balcony and listen to snippets of conversations I will never hear the end of, I am reminded that there are an infinite number of ways to live a life, and mine is only one.

It is a remarkably humbling and yet enjoyable feeling.

This city has given me so much to do and see and experience. It is a feast for an inquisitive mind. It is a bright tapestry of others' lives, and I love it. I absolutely love it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure at some point I'll write a post all about how much I love the country, because I do. See, I've got layers...like an onion.