WHAT’S IN MY CATCH-ALL? NO. 4

Sometimes the most mundane object becomes a catch-all.

The paper pastry bag from the coffee shop has become one of mine.

I think I like anything that gives things a place to be for a moment. Something that holds them in place, isolates them, gives me a little area to look at. The pastry bag becomes this temporary white background wherever I happen to be. A non-permanent catch-all for when I’m out in the world and nowhere near all the other catch-alls I have at home.

Sometimes there’s a scone sitting on it. Then there isn’t a scone anymore, just the crumbs left behind. And somewhere between those two moments it becomes a moving still life.

Other days it collects crumpled straw wrappers, a croissant, paper clips pulled from my journals. I use paper clips as placeholders for ideas I’ve written down, so occasionally those ideas end up sitting on the pastry bag too.

A sweating iced Americano leaves rings from the condensation. A piece of gum I don’t know what to do with gets stuck to it and, if left there long enough, starts stretching across the paper and turning into its own little sculpture.

Sometimes it’s scraps from a collage I’m working on. My phone. Receipts from the day crumpled into little balls. I actually like looking at the way a receipt crumples. Every one becomes a slightly different sculpture.

Maybe there’s a glob of jalapeño cream cheese because sometimes there is just wayyyy too much cream cheese on a bagel and eventually it falls off, marking the paper like a tiny Jackson Pollock.

One time my pastry-bag catch-all held a deviled egg meticulously shaped like a baby in a bassinet.

You are probably thinking, “ANTHONY, why do you have a deviled egg shaped like a baby in a bassinet?”

Well, because the whimsy fairy, AKA Katie, once made me an entire nursery of deviled eggs for my birthday. She made a tray of edible whimsy, packed them into a glass jar and shuffled through the tunnels of Manhattan to bring them to me.

Obviously one needed to sit on my catch-all for a brief moment before I ate it.

I still remember that tiny edible baby sitting completely alone on its paper stage in my photo studio against a solid backdrop.

And maybe that’s what I like about the paper catch-all.

Nothing on it is meant to stay.

A scone becomes crumbs.
Ice becomes a water ring.
Gum stretches.
Cream cheese smears.
Receipts get crushed.
Ideas come loose from journals.

Then eventually the whole catch-all gets thrown away.

For a little while, though, it held everything exactly where it needed to be.