http://faerye.net/tag/clutter Posts tagged with "clutter" - Faerye Net 2008-12-28T13:15:10+00:00 Felicity Shoulders http://faerye.net/ http://faerye.net/post/these-are-a-few-of-my-favorite-words-part-xiv These are a few of my favorite words, Part XIV 2008-12-28T13:15:10+00:00 2008-12-28T13:16:12+00:00 <p>Invented word edition! Because I come from a cluttery and packratty folk, I find a lot of use for clutter words, such as the slightly fear-inducing <a href="http://faerye.net/post/kipple" target="links">&#8216;kipple&#8217;</a> invented by P.K. Dick. But here&#8217;s another neologism of decades&#8217; standing, which has much currency in my family:</p> <center><b>mathom</b></center> <blockquote>&#8230;anything that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away, they called a <em>mathom</em>. Their dwellings were apt to become rather crowded with mathoms, and many of the presents that passed from hand to hand were of that sort.<br /><em>Prologue, The Ring Sets Out, The Lord of the Rings</em></blockquote> <p>J.R.R. Tolkien and P.K. Dick have my number entirely. Mathoms and kipple, alive, alive-o.</p> http://faerye.net/post/kipple Kipple 2003-08-07T22:46:06+00:00 2008-12-28T13:16:57+00:00 <p>Sometimes I feel like my life is filling up with what P.K. Dick called <b>kipple</b> &#8212; clutter, useless junk, but not just the items themselves, the windrows they form, but the force of entropy multiplying them, forcing them on you, choking you in a sea of useless, discarded, and ultimately inescapable rubbish.</p> <p>I don&#8217;t think it helps that my boss is a pack-rat. I go to work, and I&#8217;m surrounded by articles he&#8217;s clipped, correspondence he&#8217;s kept, and little trinkets he thought were interesting dating back to my elementary school years. Currently, at work, we&#8217;re trying to organize this stuff. I find it very frustrating. Not only that I have to do this <em>for someone else</em> (I was told by my {&quot;Clean your room!&#8220;} parents all my {&#8221;Clean your room!&#8220;} life eventually emerging from the kipple was my {&#8221;Clean your room!&quot;} <span class="caps">OWN</span> moral obligation and duty.) but that I come home from having done this for 4 hours or more a day, and I walk into the same mass of kipple, multiplying, spreading, striving against the checking influence of my husband, teeming, defiant; that I left in order to go to work in the morning. I figured out a long time ago that work is selling your life for money. Now it appears that it&#8217;s selling the little organizational impulse I have for money, too, and soon I will drown in a pile of sketches I must keep, books I&#8217;ll read later, coupons I&#8217;ve clipped, awards I&#8217;ve won, gifts I&#8217;ve received, and toys I&#8217;ve loved.</p>