I bought a new wallet and while cleaning out the old one I found a single porcupine quill tucked into one of the credit card compartments. I have no idea where it came from.

My grandparents live on a farm in Canada. Once, while visiting, I took the difficult path along the side of the lake – the one that usually only the dog takes, while people cross by canoe. On the steep bank under the fir trees I found the remains of a porcupine: skin and quills. Sacred.

I took a few of the spines and when I got back to the house I carefully put them into a matchbox which I carefully stashed in the cup holder by the driver’s seat in my car, and which I never saw again. I don’t know how I lost them when I was being so attentive, but it seemed right. Must not have been okay for me to take anything from that animal.

So the other day when I found the treasure in my purse it felt like full circle. I’ve been given back one quill.

Soon after my last move a friend gave me a bunch of furniture, including a wicker arm chair which she’d found on a Brooklyn street. It’s very comfortable, and my cat Annabelle has adopted it for her own. This is Annabelle’s chair:

Yesterday my building had a stoop sale. We were setting up and I saw my upstairs neighbor bring out a chair that looked identical to mine. I told him, and he said that he too had found his chair on the street – when he lived in Hong Kong. Two chairs found abandoned on the street, in cities on opposite sides of the planet, living in the same building.

Throughout the day I kept staring at his chair, imagining someone buying it and carrying it away; I couldn’t bear the thought. Mid-afternoon I asked him if his price was firm. “You know what – for you, free. They should be together.”

I’m beginning to suspect that while we may believe we’re masters of our own destiny, in fact our stuff is sucking us in the wake of it’s own purpose.

I’ve been thinking about things. Physical objects. How much I love particular tools and materials. A fragment of lace, one bead, my desk, a collection of postcards. Stuff.

Being the well-intentioned child of socially conscious parents I recoil from defining myself as materialistic. However the more I think about it, the more I’m finding validity in the word. I do love this material world, and the way the physical can carry a story and preserve meaning.

When I was little I played a game with myself. I would stare at my most cherished and familiar belongings, striving to make them unfamiliar. Something would pop and, rather like the description of switching from left to right brain in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, I would see my Teddy bear the way a stranger would, as a scuffed toy with a zipper across it’s back.

I don’t want to play that game anymore. Instead I’d like to explore more deeply the relationships I have with objects. See what comes up.

I love these two wooden spoons. The short one came to me in a batch of kitchen utensils when my ex’s grandmother moved into a home and distributed her belongings. It was already worn down on an angle from years of meals.

The large spoon was brand new when I bought it. I was working in a kitchen supply store, and for a while I oiled it, the way you’re ’supposed’ to. I like it better now that it’s dried out and stained. The burn down the left side just happened last week when I left it too close to the flame. Still works good.