Dresser to drawer to a burden box.

At work last week, I had to take apart a lovely piece of furniture from the 1930's transition into Art Deco. I was not directed to take it apart the way it was finely put together.

I had to smash the hardy bits with a hammer and stomp the beams with foot. Exhilarated at first then turned into an earnest guilt. I really was taking part in the destruction of design. Don't tell the craftsman please.

I don't remember much of this long dresser other than its stumpy little legs and its antique knobs. However, in some sort of reconciliation and commemoration, I saved one of the drawers.

It is to become a contribution to Burden Box and a new piece of art. And that makes me kind of feel like a masochist turned doctor/plastic surgeon.

Morale: Donate your furniture or recycle it. Or just give it to me.

Burden 05.

The tension of having to live two mutally exclusive lives weighs heavily on me, always looming in the background of my small existence. I have made my choice - I cannot with a clean take the other path, which offers only small-mindedness, spite and a spiraling descent into a life oh hypocrisy and delusion. But although I may have internally taken this stance, I am still forced to maintain an elaborate artifice of propriety for those concerned, to put on a face to meet the faces that I meet - this ruse often makes me feel like a coward and a liar, but I see no alternative. It is for myself that I do this - what could I possibly have to gain? - but for the well-being of others who would be devastated were they to know how I truly feel. I comfort myself with the knowledge that I have succeeded for years in keeping my two worlds apart, but cannot shake the fear that someday my little deception will be uncovered.

Above all, I regret not having been able to explain my circumstances to those closest to me, since they deserve to know, and, I hope, truly do care. I desperately want to articulate these things and have someone else hear them, but I am paralyzed by fear of how they will react.

[to view small image clipping at the bottom, please click the image for zoom]

Not bold enough to sieze its subject.

Joseph cornell.

http://www.josephcornellbox.com/menu.htm

[Joseph Cornell]

Many of Cornell's most brilliant boxes were not intended for the museums in which they now reside. They were gifts, tokens of affection -- I love this. You will love this. He had them delivered to his favorite movie stars and authors. He handed them, personally to his most loved ballerinas. And hey were almost uniformly sent back. He was reject, laughed at, and, in one unfortunate case, tackled.

But the boxes themselves -- not his hopelessly romantic supplication -- survived. More than survived, they came to be considered among the most seminal works of twentieth-century art. Their call beckoned, and continues to beckon, curators, museum-goers, and so many artists and writers. Their call, not Cornell's. They became gifts of gifts of gifts of gifts -- a cascade of gifts without fixed givers or receivers.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Jackson Heights, New York

September 2001

Don't have an envelope?

Pstttt. Instructions for submission are found on the first entry from February or here.
I don't discriminate against envelope types.

Box collection progress.

The box collection in finally beginning.

These ones are quite cute and tiny but I'm looking to go grander and larger!

Keep your eyes open for me.

Abrahams Trade Company

Books Cafe & Things

Burden 04.

[All purpose Generic Rubber; EXTRA SMALL (holds 1oz); Super Thin; Made in Taiwan]