Auctions and the Ephemeral Quality of Life

Last Saturday I went to an Estate Auction. I’m always visiting auctions. I am a “Hi, my name is Luis and I’m an auction junkie…” type of guy. Some of the times I’m just curious about what may be there, some others I go because there are books advertised. The present case had both characteristics.
This auction was different in many ways from others though. For once, I took my camera with me. Even though my cameras are always at arm’s reach, this was a first. The other interesting thing was the items that were there for auction. The place was full of Egyptian articles and esoteric books about Kabala and ancient Egypt religious practices. Quite amazing indeed.
There is something magical about Estate Auctions. If you step aside from the obvious reason you go to an auction, if you place yourself as an observer, the proverbial fly on the wall, you would experience something very different. Auctions are the epitome of object immortality while at the same time are a vision of the future. It is our own mortality that dances at the tune of the auctioneer’s voice. Left behind possessions are but a surreal echo of a person’s life. I think that if I wasn’t so fascinated by some of the items one sometimes finds at auctions I would stand in awe in their presence as if they were religious relics. I cannot but wonder what drove some of the deceased to collect many of the curious items we can find.
This lady, I found out, died in 1999 of lung cancer. The auction was held at her house and her husband was there – a witness to the common past of this lady with her personal possessions – taking himself pictures of it all. As if this was his own rite of passage. Perhaps an incomplete one at that. A not so clean break with the past. This is alright, I cannot find fault in creating memories. Memories, after all, are the ultimate possession.
All of it makes me wonder if I could ever find a practical use in my own life for what Joel Biroco said in his online journal:

I do think possessions weigh you down, give you too much that’s too trivial to think about. One day I will inherit what my parents spent their lives slaving for. Not a massive amount, but enough to last a long time if I go to live in a place where food and shelter is cheap, such as Asia. Then perhaps my accumulated skills at living light and desiring little may come into their own. Perhaps then I will stop marking time, as it were, and start living. Oh, I don’t say I am not living now, I’m just very very curious about what I’m actually living for

The goal is very noble indeed. Present society is so stuck on accumulation that we’ve become overgrown squirrels preparing for a hibernation that never seems to happen. When the date is actually upon us, material possessions do actually lose their appeal. Unless you are an ancient Egyptian – and this lady, if we go by what she had in life, appears to have been one in spirit – whereby your possessions accompany you to the afterlife, they are always checked at the door, thank you. On the other hand, I really wish that, as a tribute to her beliefs in life, some of the things that were at the auction, actually had made it to her side in the coffin.
Many times I wish I had the ascetic mentality that Joel seems to be developing. Easier said than done. Baggage is already way beyond my control and I am already bound to fatten some auctioneer’s wallet.
Mortality is nothing but an opportunity for those left among the living to keep accumulating from left behind possessions. All of it to eventually feed those that will most certainly come to their own Estate Auctions.