Belloq: You and I are very much alike. Archaeology is our religion, yet we have both fallen from the purer faith. Our methods have not differed as much as you pretend. I am a shadowy reflection of you. It would take only a nudge to make you like me, to push you out of the light.
Indy: Now you’re getting nasty.
Belloq: You know it’s true. How nice. Look at this (pocket watch). It’s worthless. Ten dollars from a vendor in the street. But I take it, I bury it in the sand for a thousand years, it becomes priceless. Like the Ark, Men will kill for it. Men like you and me.
I frequently come back to this scene. At our house, each time we try to get rid of idle stuff serving no purpose, I begin struggling with actually parting with our ‘stuff.” I am not speaking of anything of true monetary value, just the common items acquired over the years while living a common life... things like old toys, clothes, kindergarten art projects, birthday and holiday cards from years ago, and a host of other clutter - all of them taking up space, all of them difficult to let go. But letting go is a part of life. So why is this part so difficult?
These things are the things that define us, they are the receipts of a life lived. And while I don’t expect my little league baseball glove to be a priceless artifact in a thousand years, touching it and holding it helps the memories of those simpler days rush back to me. In an instant I am once again on the pitcher’s mound of Warwick American Little League on a baseball field sitting just behind the public library, trying my best to mimic the windup of Roger Clemens. Without the tactility of that glove, would that memory be lost forever? Perhaps. But even the most powerful talisman of memory can delay the inevitable for only a short period of time. That memory, along with every other memory I have will one day, in the not too distant cosmic future, will be gone for all time.
But what of my stuff, what will happen to my stuff?
In their shared memoir entitled, Along the Way: The Journey of a Father and Son, Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez tell their story of not only making a film together, but of traveling through life together. They discuss the things that have meaning, the things they thought had meaning, and the lessons they learned along they way as well as along “The Way.” At one point Emilio remembers when his younger brother Charlie realized that all living things, humans included, will one day die. Charlie had lots of questions and really struggled with this part of life - the finality of all things. This is not uncommon, for as Emilio points out, every person, one way or another, must come to terms with their own mortality. All we can really hope for, I suppose, is that we leave the world a little better than it was when we got here.
Like the stuff in my garage that I need to clean out, this part of the book has me wondering about what will eventually become of my stuff, of my car, of my house? And then harsh truths and reality come rushing in. In one hundred years, I will be dead and so will every other person I know. There will be strangers living in my house. My most prized possessions will either be a keepsake of some yet-to-be-born descendent or they will find their place next to the things I am sending off to the dump. All of my books, my clothes, and that very same baseball glove, will all be rendered meaningless items out of time.
I know this is all true, but I still struggle to give up some of these things. These objects tell my story. They are the physical evidence of a revealing about culture and some sort of personal legacy. Objects can be a direct connection to events and people - they are the embodied relics of who we are - of who I am.
Come to think of it, maybe I will bury a few things out back… where is that glove?