This Post Is Really About My Harry Potter Collection

So I'm home now, and I'm dutifully going through all the crap in my room to get rid of stuff per my earlier manifesto and my mother's requests. This post is sort of about cleaning/organizing, sort of about moving, sort of about living like a gypsy, sort of about priorities, and mostly about my absurd collection of Harry Potter knicknacks and utterly useless memerobilia. (I can't spell either of those words.)

The goal is to reduce my possessions to the amount of stuff that will fit in my future New York apartment. It's remarkable how much stuff I managed to cram into my desk and under my bed in high school. I don't think the Mary Poppins carpet bag was not such an imaginative thing anymore. My whole room is like that.

Essentially I'm doing half of the moving process right now. Getting rid of the stuff I don't want to haul across the country, that won't fit in my new place anyway. I started this blog post about six weeks ago and never really got back to it because I've been hard at work slimming down my life. I've found a lot of crazy things.

I donated five bags of clothes within three days of getting home. I've probably recycled my weight in paper. Every day I find at least one thing to throw in the donation bag. There's now an empty dresser in my room, space to hang things in my closet. Half of the space under my bed is empty, and the rest of it is pretty much filled with books that I cleared off of my bookshelves at my mom's request. I tossed out awards and made room on my shelves for pictures of people I care about and some art. But the big thing, as I said, is the Harry Potter stuff.

Harry Potter things I have that probably no one else has:

1. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets "art coloring book" completely uncolored.
2. Harry Potter "reaching for the golden snitch" computer accessory. It's a figuring of him that can sit on a computer monitor. I don't have a computer monitor. And this is pre-movies, so it doesn't even look like Daniel Radcliffe.
3. A Hermione Granger figurine sitting on top of a potions book that has a "secret pull-out drawer" to store all my secret treasures that fit in a 2x3 inch box.
4. Hallmark "keepsake ornament" - Hermione Granger's trunk, which inexplicably includes broomstick and cane charms to put inside in addition to a potions bottle, time turner, and book.
5. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone movie poster
6. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban movie poster (with Good Charlotte on the back?)
7. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone movie poster book
8. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets movie poster book
9. A sign that I made on the computer that says "Welcome to the chamber of Emma the Harry Potter Queen, Enjoy your stay!" (I went by Emma in sixth grade, didn't you know?)
10. A whole bunch of individual pages pulled from a magazine with pictures of the Harry Potter characters on them
11. Harry Potter postcards, formerly collected into a book.
12. A laminated page from the Chicago Tribune Sunday, November 5, 2000 with a color ad for the Harry Potter windows at Marshall Field's.
13. 2 little containers that each have three "collector stones" which are just little one inch long colored bits of plastic.
14. A page torn out of an April, 2003 issue of People magazine, announcing the birth of JK Rowling's son, David Gordon (Rowling Murray), her first with Neil Murray, husband of one year, and the reason there was a three year gap between Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix.
15. Giant Hogwarts poster.
16. Two (one laminated) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows posters from Borders.
17. Harry Potter analog wall clock (pre-movies)
18. Two pencil cases that may not be from America. They seem to have German writing on them.
19. 2003 and 2004 desk calendars
20. Harry Potter "big sticker book" - two of them, bumper sticker size
21. Temporary tattoo kit with purple(?) ink. Two different sets.
22. Stickers with house flags, other random stickers
23. An unopened set of 8 Chamber of Secrets invitations. Definitely keeping those for my next birthday party.

I've had a lot of that stuff since the late 90s, before the movies came out. But what I've realized is two things. The longer you hang onto something, the more valuable it seems to become, even if you didn't really care about it in the first place. "I've had this since I was five years old!" Yes, but do you still need it, or does it just get put back in a corner of the closet each time you clean it out? That's why I tossed out so much stuff from high school and college when I got home - to get rid of it before it can become stuff I've had forever. "I've hung onto it this long, I should keep it!" Nope.

The other thing I've come to really believe, particularly through a year of living with maybe a quarter of my possessions is that so much of the "stuff" we have is just objects to affirm who we are. I have kept all this Harry Potter stuff all these years not because I actually use it, but because it's proof that I'm the huge Potter fan that I am. But I know (as does anyone who's spent more than five minutes with me) how important Potter is in my life, what a big fan I am. I don't need stuff to prove that. Just like I didn't need the stack of awards I've accumulated over my school career to prove I'm smart, so I threw most of them away.

Today, numbers 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 15, half of 16, and 17 went out the door. They're going to the nine-year-old son of a former teacher of mine who saw my declaration on facebook that I didn't need this stuff anymore. For the first time in my life, I GOT RID OF HARRY POTTER MEMEROBILIA. Maybe I'm growing up, but the eight-year-old Harry Potter fan in me hasn't gone anywhere; she's just got a little more space under her bed.

Democalypse 2012

Was politics ever about proving oneself right rather than proving someone else wrong? I have to imagine it was... I don't want to vote for someone just because s/he proved the other guy is an idiot. But what has our political system become? A lot of very expensive mudslinging.

As a reluctant member of the "millennial" generation, I can't help but think about the fundamental flaws in our economy. Never mind the Depression-era unemployment rates, the housing market collapse (have you seen the documentary Inside Job? It's infuriating.), the skyrocketing costs of education. We've all talked these things to death. My NYU education cost approximately a quarter of a million dollars. I don't know how much more I can talk about it. So now, my friends and I all have these degrees that cost about as much as a presidential campaign, but are guaranteed jobs? No. The jobs we would normally get right out of school are taken by the laid-off, who have more experience than the recently-graduated. We're expected to take unpaid internships to gain real world chops before we can hope to get a decent job. But how does one take a full-time unpaid internship and still, you know, make money?

This article has been spreading across my facebook network like wildfire, the worries and desperations of the millennial generation that seems to be guaranteed nothing but hard work, and even the hard work is only if you can find it. The jobs aren't out there, and neither is the money.

Yet there's money coming from somewhere - what about the millions of dollars spent on political campaigns? Remember the 2008 election? Remember how the race to the White House started mid-2007 with about ten candidates on each side? Well nine of those on each side raised tons of money to run a race they wouldn't even finish, let alone win. This year, Rick Santorum (don't get me started) kept running looong after it was clear he would never get the Republican nomination. It seemed to be a matter of pride - sticking it out because he said he would, continuing to accept campaign donations and run pointless ads and pay for air time to say utterly ridiculous things. And he's not the only one. All the politicians do it.

Look, I recognize that part of the democratic process is allowing anyone who meets the legal requirements for candidacy to run. Choice is good, we like to believe. And I like getting to vote. I do. Maybe this is a quintessential #firstworldproblems rant, but I think it's a huge problem: running for political office is expensive. And people with more money do have better chances. But why do we have to spend all this money on political campaigns?

Want to get elected president? Instead of having people donate money to your campaign or your super PAC, why not have people donate that same money to a fund to provide scholarships for kids to go to college? I know a lot of people who'd vote for that guy.

I know I'm oversimplifying things, but it's something that's bothered me for years. During each presidential election, a dozen or so people spend millions of dollars - each - on not getting elected. And that's true for other elections too. These politicians spend all this money not even to make themselves look good but often to make their opponents look bad, and they run these ads on television even though no one watches commercials anymore. And the secret is they could do all their mudslinging campaigns on facebook for a lot less money and people might actually see them rather than just fast forwarding the commercials on their DVR.

Okay make a jump with me. Enjoy a little music - I've been listening to this song a lot lately and it's what prompted this particular post now, of all times.

There are so many problems in our country (not to mention everywhere else) that it just seems ridiculous to me to be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on an argument. Oh, and don't we have unheard of amounts of debt? Good, let's just keep maxing out our political credit cards instead of fixing New Orleans or sending people to college or restoring the American auto industry.

Oh my God, this is insane.
How'd it get like this or has it always been this way?
Oh my God, I'm so ashamed.
And we try to close our eyes and make this go away.

Morning Musings (An Organizational Rant)

It's been so hot I've had a hard time sleeping lately. I woke up around 5 am this morning and saw golden light on my walls coming from the window, and I looked out and saw this. I don't think I've ever been so happy to see 5 am.

 

Look at it reflecting off the river!

So anyway, living in this unairconiditioned box, in combination with essentially living for an additional seven weeks out of the suitcase I packed for two weeks, has got me thinking a lot about things I need and things I don't. Apparently I can get by without air conditioning. I guess I can also get by without solid nights of sleep (at least so far). Yes, I've been wearing the same six shirts for the last month and a half. And yes, the only three pairs of pants I've had to wear basically since I left for Spain in August really do need replacing now; they get worn out a lot faster when you have less options. And not a day has gone by that I have not rued sending my other pair of shorts home, thinking, "I don't need two pairs of shorts for two weeks in Europe." My God I need to buy another pair of shorts. But apparently I don't need a lot of the clothes I know I've got sitting in drawers at home. And I don't know what all that stuff in my desk is that I haven't really seen since last summer, but I hope that when I get home I will remember I got by without it for a year and probably don't need it anymore.

I'm sure some of this attitude comes from my mom, the home organizer. And some of it comes from being a type-A neat freak (thanks for that, too, Mom), but I've still always had a lot of stuff. It's just been well-organized stuff. And now I don't want so much of it. Some things have been a little complicated since I ended up with an unexpected six weeks in New York, but mostly things are a lot simpler with only a carry on's worth of belongings. Now, don't get too excited Mom, I think part of why I'm so comfortable in this room I'm living in is because it has two bookcases packed to the gills with books, and though I go through my collection once or twice a year and always find a couple things to toss, we all know I have a harder time parting with books than with anything else.

Do you know how weird it is to be reading library copies of Harry Potter books? This may be a first.

I really am trying to think of what all the stuff in my very full room is. I have fifteen years of dance costumes in my closet, most of which I'm going to get rid of. I'm trying to sell my American Girl dolls that I have held onto for ten years even though I only ever wanted one (which I bought myself) so that I could do its hair. I finally decided to try to sell my flute that I played in junior high and then only a handful of times in the seven years since. Before I started college I condensed all my grade school crap into a single cardboard box.

There is a nagging feeling growing inside me that a lot of the random things cluttering my room are bits of my collection of Harry Potter memorabilia, which I can say from 800 miles away I won't part with. I mean, my eighteen Harry Potter books alone (not counting Tales of Beedle the Bard or Quidditch Through the Ages/Magical Beasts and Where to Find Them) take up plenty of space. And space, if you didn't know, is something of a scorching commodity in New York. It's a hotter than this weather we've been having, and that's saying something.

So, we've established Potter is important. My photos and scrapbooks are important. Minimal clothing is important. The books stay. But eventually I've got to haul all this stuff across half the country, so most of the rest of it has got to go. (I can already feel this whole thing coming back to haunt me in a few weeks when I get home.)

Join me, friends! You know you've got a drawer where you throw the junk you don't know what to do with and plan to go through "at some point." Which is never. Believe it or not, I have one of those drawers. I do. And the only thing I can promise you is in it is some Harry Potter calendars from 2002. (I'm not kidding.) Don't think of it as summer cleaning, think of it as lightening up your life! Even in Europe I got tired of lugging the suitcase around. I think I wore all but two things that I had packed, and yet I still didn't want to be dragging around as much stuff as I had. So I definitely want to get rid of the excess in my life before I have to pack it into the back of an SUV and probably inevitably haul it up a narrow staircase while my mom reminds me this is the fourth time she's helped me move into a New York apartment.

And I promise you don't need all those school papers you're keeping. Just stop it. It's taking up so much space, and it's utterly useless. I gave my brother my calculus notes years ago and threw the rest away, with the exception of things I wrote. And don't keep those readings you never read that you think you will later because you want to be well-read and intellectual. Maybe that was just something I did but we'll pretend it's not. You haven't read them yet. You're not going to. And if it was given to you to read in a class, I would bet you could find it in a book or maybe even on the internet if you're suddenly possessed with the urge to read The Prince or something.

I care about skylines and pink heavens at five am and having a comfortable bed and being surrounded by books. And I care way more about my family and friends than anything. And, okay, I take an unreasonable amount of pride in the absurdity of my collection of utterly useless Harry Potter things. But part of what studying abroad did, and graduating did, and living on my own with all this free time has done, is help me figure out who I am, at least for now, and I am not all that stuff. Because I've been me for the last ten months without it. Out with the old. In with (less) new.

And the best thing about that sky? It takes up all the space in the world, but no space at all in my room. :)

The "I Just Got Out of Theatre School and Don't Understand Free Time" Guide to Avoiding Boredom

And what does a recently-graduated, barely-employed, almost-resident of New York City do with herself? (Anybody who knows me keeps asking me what on earth I'm doing with myself all day.) Thusly I present to you:

The "I Just Got Out of Theatre School and Don't Understand Free Time" Guide to Avoiding Boredom

1. First of all don't you dare be bored in NYC. People are only bored if they're boring. Don't be boring.
2. When was the last time you read Harry Potter? It wasn't recently enough. (I read the whole series every June, NO SHAME.)
3. Go see FREE outdoor theatre. The New York Times kindly posted this article with a list of tons of free theatre to see this summer. You could see a show or two a week all summer without paying a dime. I'm personally looking forward to the Pearl Jam Hamlet that will hopefully be a spectacular disaster.
4. Write a play! Try it. It's a great thing to do by yourself. David Bowie just showed up in my play. I think he's the fairy godmother.
5. Try to "tan" in a park. Lots of parks. Read Harry Potter in the park. There are so many parks. New parts of the High Line are open! Go there! I did, today!
6. Make funny pandora stations. I found out that if I just add Motley Crue to my David Bowie station, pandora will basically play all of the music I would normally listen to, which maybe defeats the purpose of listening to pandora.
7. Remember that play you're writing? Does it require research? Probably! I'm obsessed with Cold War Berlin so my play is set in Berlin in 1975. I'm pretty sure reading Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell: The Dangerous Glitter of David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed counts as research since Bowie was in Berlin then and he's in my play. But I'm reading In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson, too.
8. Learn a new language! I'm learning French for free using Duo Lingo. I'm also keeping up my Spanish skills that way. Woo. Too bad they haven't taught me how to say "I am learning French" in French. Um... Estoy aprendiendo francais! Culture.
9. Jump on any random money-making opportunity, such as being one of approximately three women working at a gay pride party attended by no less than 1,000 gay men and a few women. (Yes, I did that. It was hilarious.)
10. You still haven't gotten hooked on Mad Men and Breaking Bad yet? Get on that. They're on netflix. Yes, fine, you can rewatch all of Weeds first. The new season does start July 1...
11. Write in a blog a lot. Oh and make a list of the things you do so you can feel accomplished and share it with other people.

That covers most of it... Plus working sometimes, hanging out with friends sometimes, talking to my family sometimes. And, you know, reestablishing my credit cards and bank account nonsense. Having access to cash is nice. Depositing checks is nice.

Oh and obsessively checking the weather to strategically open and close my windows in my non-air-conditioned apartment. You didn't like that mid-90s high-humidity last week? Yeah try doing it without air conditioning. Uh huh.

Gonna go back to Prisoner of Azkaban now. :)

Stepford Island

So then what happened?

Did I tell you that the day after I got to London my friend introduced me to a friend of hers who was looking for a subletter? Did I even mention that when I was packing during graduation week I had to sort my things into stuff staying in NYC, stuff going home, stuff going to Europe, and stuff going to New Jersey? Yeah, that's right. Try sorting your belongings into four locations while graduating from college and trying to host your family and preparing for two weeks of travel.

Aaaanyway. So I skyped with this girl from Kerry's apartment and it seemed like a good deal - the place was in Astoria, with other theatre people, and since she was leaving all her stuff, she was only going to charge me half of her rent, making the place really cheap, and the timing was right. Great!

We got back from Paris, left JFK, and began the ridiculous public transit trek (requiring two trains and a bus, not including the airtrain from the airport to the subway) and finally got to my new home for the next six weeks. We were looking forward to putting our stuff down, maybe showering, taking a nap. I was looking forward to not having to pack and unpack every few days for the next six weeks.

Suitcases hauled upstairs, unlocked the door, got inside. The place was filthy. I tried to be positive about it, but after sitting in the living room (on the trunk that they used as a coffee table, because I wouldn't sit on the couch), I decided I couldn't live there. I didn't want to be paying money to basically sit on a loft bed for six weeks. So Mom called my aunt in New Jersey, and we ran away via one more subway train and a NJ transit train.

Let's take a look at this picture: Lindsay has no driver's license, no debit card, no credit card, and no address to which to have new ones sent. Lindsay had already called to have a new debit card sent to the Astoria apartment, which she now has to cancel, since she doesn't think the roommates she abandoned are likely to want to send it to her, and she wouldn't know where to have it sent anyway. Yes, life feels like crap.

Mom changed her flight (for free, yay southwest!) so that she could stay and help me figure things out for a few days. I decided to try one more sublet option I remembered at the last minute and decided if that didn't work, I was giving up and going home to Chicago until further notice.

The sublet was on Roosevelt Island. Don't worry, no one knows where that is, I didn't either - it's a teeny island between Manhattan in the 60s and Queens, only two miles long and less than a quarter of a mile wide. The Queensboro Bridge goes right over it. I found this place thanks to a friend placing an ad in the Playwrights digest - our weekly-ish e-newsletter with announcements of performances, auditions, sublets, etc. She said "price negotiable," and I wrote her with the upper end of my budget, sure it was too low, since her place sounded so nice, but she said the people who had offered her more money were strangers, so I was in luck.

I was anxious to go look at it that day (Wednesday), but the timing didn't work. Turns out I couldn't really go until Saturday. So I spent the next couple days trying to relax in suburban New Jersey, hoping I'd be able to start putting things back in order over the weekend. I even got to see my nine-year-old cousin's third grade play about New Jersey. It was awesome. Friday night I was scheduled to work in the city, so I took the train in and then spent the night with friends in Brooklyn, since I didn't get off until 12:30.

Saturday morning I made my way to Roosevelt Island, which has a stop on the F train. (You learn something new every day). The apartment was great and the best part, to me, was the view of the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings from the living room window. It was a definite yes. We made plans for me to stay the next night, Sunday, with her leaving Monday, and then I left, the happiest I'd been in days.

In the afternoon I met up with my favorite NYU professor, Bob, who I sometimes have coffee with, and we had a celebratory brunch at Le Pain Quotidien, with mimosas, since we were feeling exuberant, I guess. We spent some time catching up on graduation and everything going on in his life - we can always talk for hours - and then went our separate ways as Bob was meeting guests later and had to get ready.

I then walked uptown to meet back up with my aunt, uncle, two cousins, and two of their friends. My other cousin was celebrating his twelfth birthday (even though his birthday is the day before mine) with an overnight in the city. My aunt has had an apartment in the Gramercy area for a long time, a place I have been fortunate enough to stay at on several NYC trips before moving here, and they were all staying in the city for the night.

We went to the spy exhibit at the discovery center in Times Square - God bless my aunt and uncle for chaperoning three twelve year olds and a nine year old in New York City - via subway. The adults thought the exhibit was really interesting, with lots of McCarthy-era technology, but it required far more reading than the boys were really interested in, so we moved through pretty quickly. With so much time to spare we went to Toys R Us and the boys rode the ferris wheel. I didn't even know there was a ferris wheel in Toys R Us, I'd never been in there. And I don't need to go again.

After Toys R Us we headed back down to Union Square - they to go to Max Brenner's for dinner, I to go to work just a few blocks away. After work I went back to the apartment, conveniently close, and then on Sunday morning we all went out for breakfast at Big Daddy's, one of their favorite places.

My plan then was to head out to Roosevelt Island (my suitcase having been brought in the car with everyone and stored in the apartment), but we realized the bag of all the toiletries I'd bought at a Target in NJ - much cheaper than anywhere in the city, of course - had been left back home. So we left my suitcase with the doorman and I rode with everyone back to New Jersey.

Then the rainstorm came. There was huge thunder and lightning, and I decided I didn't want to travel and lug my suitcase all over New York in that weather. So I contacted my friend, told her I'd meet her the next day to pick up the keys, and spent one more night - Tony night! - in New Jersey.

Late Monday morning I finally took one last train into the city. I met up with Ryann, my subletter, at Playwrights to get the keys, walked up to the apartment to pick up my suitcase, and then took two trains to get to my new home. Exhausted but happy, I unpacked, which took about five minutes, as I only had one suitcase, and then enjoyed staying in one place for a while.

The apartment is amazing, with a big kitchen and big living room. I have my own room, which I think is bigger than my bedroom at home, with a half bath attached. From my window I can see bits of Manhattan and Queens, as well as an outdoor theatre directly below me. There's a Shakespeare play going on there this month, and someone I know happens to be in it.

Roosevelt Island is weird though. It's like a small suburb in the middle of New York City. It has a tiny branch of the public library - the size of a one room school house and carrying exactly ZERO Harry Potter books. There is one school and one high school. There is a post office. There is a police station. There is a grocery store. There are I think two churches. There is a bus that goes around the island that costs 25 cents. There is a starbucks and a duane reade. There are two hospitals, a park, a baseball field, a basketball court, a youth center. There are a few restaurants, a thrift shop, things like that. Most of the people who live here are either young families or older people, because of the hospitals - lots of people in wheelchairs. So really. It's like a suburb but condensed into less than one square mile, so it's apartment buildings instead of houses. The apartments are nice but the buildings and the hallways are all very industrial. It's weird. It's beautiful, there's lots of trees and lots of water, but I think it's too quiet. I'm enjoying it for now, like a six week vacation, but I guess it's okay that I can't really afford to live here.

Still... I'll miss this view.