Amy's "Past and Present Collections"

This is an excellent list idea, ohbyjingo!

Now, I’m going to go far out with what I’ll call a collection… I’m thinking of Don Juan “collecting” women (actually, his sidekick really collected them, he wrote them all down and marvelled at the list, I think the Don was only attentive to the object in view and never left the moment, but that’s beside the point). I mean to say, I want to put up some collections not only of objects I can see all at once, but experiences, memory-objects. Some people collect foreign foods, or stamps in their passports, or here in CO, “fourteeners.”

It’s hard to say what counts as a collection. I think it has to be something where the main pleasure is from gathering, maybe from getting closer to a whole. The group of objects has to be the end— they aren’t for another purpose. A collection is precisely the sum of its parts. Am I right? I think there’s a difference between, say, collecting degrees and going to school for a long time but with purpose. Or, between collecting “Things” and doing Things for a reason other than to have done them.