On Collecting

The following is an excerpt from Susan Sontag's
The Volcano Lover

Collecting is a species of insatiable desire, a Don Juanism
of objects in which each new find arouses a new mental
tumescence, and generates the added pleasure of scorekeeping,
of enumeration. Volume and tirelessness of conquest
would lose some of its point and savor were there not a
ledger somewhere with ones assorted mille e tre (and,
preferably, a factotum to keep it updated), the happy
contemplation of which at off-moments counteracts
the exhaustion of desire that the erotic athlete is condemned
to and against which he struggles. But lists are a much more
spiritual enterprise for the athlete of material and mental
acquisitiveness.

The list itself is a collection, a sublimated collection. One does
not actually have to own the things. To know is to have
(luckily, for those without great means). It is already a claim,
a species of possession, to think about them in this form,
the form of a list: which is to value them, to rank them, to say
they are worth remembering or desiring.

What you like: your five favorite flowers, spices, films, cars,
poems, hotels, names, dogs, inventions, Roman emperors,
novels, actors, restaurants, paintings, gems, cities, friends,
museums, tennis players...just five. Ot ten...or twenty...or
a hundred. For, midway through whatever number you settled
for, you always wish you had a bigger number to play in.
You'd forgotten there were that many things you liked.

What you've done: everyone you've gone to bed with, every
state you've been in, country you've visited, house or apartment
you've lived in, school you've attended, car you've owned,
pet you've had, job you've held, Shakespeare play you've
seen...

What the world has in it: the names of Mozart's twenty
operas or the kings and queens of England or of the fifty
American state capitals...Even the making of such lists
is an expression of desire: the desire to know, to see
arranged, to commit to memory.

What you actually have: all your CDs, your bottles
of wine, your first editions, the vintage photographs
you've purchased at auctions--such lists may do no more
than ratify the acquiring lust, unless, as it is with the Cavaliere,
your purchases are imperiled.