Sandy Stark always loved pretty things. When she was a girl, she collected unusual rocks, birds’ nests, crooked sticks and dolls. As an adult, she gravitated to white ceramics and china, paperweights, kitchenware and art. Year by year, the treasures accumulated until the only way she could navigate her San Francisco apartment was through a narrow line of what she called “goat paths.”
That was when her two grown daughters swooped in and cleaned the place out. All her treasures, gone. On reentering her house, seeing it so sterile, so empty, Stark, now 71, says she felt traumatized. Almost immediately, she began reacquiring things — with a vengeance:
“You’re pulling everything in around you, building the hamster’s nest, building the wall. Part of it is for the high. It’s an addiction, sort of. But it’s also to fill a void. It fills a lot of void.”
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