ENCOUNTERS WITH THE PAST

G. Sobakina, Music teacher, Serpukhov In many countries today, either
thanks to an abundance of goods, or on account of their inexpensive
manufacture - it is commonly fashionable only to wear new things:
clothes, shoes. But the same   thing happens as well with items of
household use: new furniture new dishes and everything right down to a
new apartment, a new house ... Given this, all that is old is
mercilessly discarded, replaced, and often this is only because it is
"old," out of style. But with this quick replacement of the old with the
new, very few people notice that along with all the old things, our past
life is also tossed out on the garbage heap, all that we knew,
experienced, felt in our past, everything that was associ- ated for us
wtlh these things, and ultimately, along with these recollections we
also lose, waste our entire life.

The project which could be called "An Encounter with the Past" proposes
precisely to combine our passion of today for the new and the importance
of such old things for our complete existence.

You need to make a special partition in the room so that it doesn't
interfere with new furniture, build it up against the wall. The box
should periodically be filled with things which have already become
useless or are broken: chair legs, an old coat, packages, purses, old
books, everything with which our re- collections are connected, and
which we would like to keep in our memory. Whenever guests would come to
see you, you would pick up some old thing (the box should always be
open), you could exag- geratedly tell about what this thing is connects
to for you, recalling the date and circumstances. In this way, your
entire past life would remain nearby, and your friends would become con-
vinced of the use and significance of such a "memorial." They themselves
would decide to create such a "museum" in their own homes.