It's Not Trash and It's Not Art

I love, and am becoming obsessed with what the homepage for Found Magazine has to offer. Go check it out!

I don't know if we're all guilty of this, but I have always been fascinated by anonymous scraps of paper (notes and drawings) and photos I come across in my daily life. I regularly scan the ATM statements that lie cluttered around the machine, from the people that used the ATM before I did. I know, they're just slips of the paper and I'll never see the lives or people attached to these account balances. But I'm always a little giddy when a read an account balance of $8,803.34 (why would anyone have that much money in their checking account?) or when I find one that says $1.54 (I know how that feels).

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. It feels like striking gold when I come across a grocery list or to-do list left behind on the bus, parking lot, or street. In college a group of us even found a love letter in the parking lot of the grocery store! Once some pictures of some guys hanging out on their porch, drinking Coors, fell out of a book I was pricing when I worked at a used college text book store.

And now there is a magazine solely devoted to this pursuit! It's funny: at work, when I'm cleaning up the waiting room at the end of the day, I'll come across all sorts of to-do and grocery lists left behind by families. But that's just garbage as far as I'm concerned. I know the author of the list and that somehow removes the magic of the find. There's no gold in the mundane details of the lives of people we know (although the spicier dirt is always interesting).

The fun part in boring to slightly odd details is when there is no context or person behind these facts. Then your imagination gets to build your own person and history behind the list. It's fun to imagine all the different possibilities why someone went to the grocery store to buy "Soft Batch cookies, toy soldiers, razors, and three gallons of ketchup" (I made that list up, by the way).

Anyway, take a look at Found Magazine. It can be guiltlessly addictive, I think, because each found item is a short story in and of itself just waiting to be written (by a more creative and skilled writer than I am). I think it's a great concept. You can even send them your own finds.

By the way, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (Strib) ran a story about Found Magazune today. The problem is to access their stories, you have to register your e-mail and pertinent information with them. What a pain! If you still want to jump through the Strib's on-line hoops (or already have), click here to access the story.