I Did Start the Fire

In the late fall of 2007 I took the accumulated personal history of 15 years and set it aflame in a bbq grill in a backyard in Charlottesville, Virginia. Now I am an archivist, fighting to save the materials of history. I don’t really regret either decision.

For personal reasons I did not want to keep the stuff I incinerated, and burning was the best, and most ritualistic means of disposal. But as an archivist I wonder about this 15 year gap. Not that my personal papers will ever go to an archive, but for those in my personal life (or future iterations) who might care, what might they make of it? What questions will they have?

There are a handful of items remaining: a couple of diplomas, some books, a World’s Greatest Drinker statuette. But being a good records manager to boot, my various tax and financial records are shredded as well. So again, what did I do for fun? Where did I travel? Where did I live and work? Who was I during that period and how did it affect who I became?

I lived it and I have to wonder, as my memory fades or becomes more selective, does that period exist without documentation?

Of course archivists have to deal with gaps in record sets (or gaps in decades/centuries of research areas) all the time, and our knowledge of history thrives. On the other or same hand, archivists have to deal with an overabundance of documentation that must be culled and deaccessioned. I used to be of the attitude that my flat selection process (“Burn it all!”) was assisting the future, but also that my own history was insignificant to the universe and, ergo, the documentation was fodder for the bonfire of my past. As I approach my dotage that opinion is changing, leaving me trying to create a new history out of the ashes of another.