The Gatherer

ieva — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:32:27 +0000

Yesterday, I was sitting with a friend, talking about various things (mostly gay sex…it’s research, all right? Being a writer has some perks), and I mentioned the hunter/farmer theory.
„And then there are the gatherers,” he said.
„Wha?”
„The gatherers. There were entire societies made of them, people gathering things, both the ones they could use right now, and the ones they could probably use later.”
„All right. I’d say that a farmer has to think four years ahead at least; a hunter lives in the moment, but for how long does a gatherer think?”
„Providing for all his life. See, I’m a gatherer. I just collect things, drag them to my cave. Books, for example. Do you remember those old-fashioned glass baby bottles?”
„Yes,” and I do. Those were made from thick glass, had designed measures (instead of printed), and were impossibly heavy.
„Well, I saw people throwing them out. I gathered them all. Probably I’ll need them.”
„Oh.”
„And an old wrought saucepan. It’s really useful.”
„Right.”

And I thought of myself; how not so long ago I really used to drag everything home, and how lately I’ve tried to abandon that instinct because, honestly, we don’t have that much room. I am still gathering some things—books, Moleskine notebooks, paper supplies, index cards—but it’s not like when I was a teenager and anything that had some artsy value in it ended up in my room.
I’m thinking that the Gatherer is another major way of thought, and writers can be gatherers, too. But how does that work for them?

ieva melgalve » gatherer

The Gatherer