a tilted scrapbook ledger for swapping curiosities, oddments & things you don't need but somebody might
found these in granny's barn — swap me something weirder!
This is the manifest. Everything below is up for swap — no money changes hands, ever. You bring a thing, I bring a thing, we squint at each other across the table, and eventually somebody nods. That's the whole system. Lots get crossed off as they're traded, so scroll slowly — the ledger is alive.
brass thing. does a brass thing.
LOT 001 · SMALL & HEAVY
Solid, polished, faintly warm to the touch even on a cold morning. There is no door it belongs to. There may never have been. Granny called it "the persuader." Will swap for: a key that opens nothing, a map of a place that closed, or a really good rock.
smells like a library that drowned
LOT 002 · FRAGILE-ISH
Tucked between the pages of a hymnal nobody sang from. Some are still slightly purple. I don't know what any of them are called and I'd like to keep it that way. Swap for: a jar of buttons, a ribbon that won a thing, or your grandmother's handwriting on anything at all.
there is a coffee ring on this lot. sorry.
LOT 003 · ONE OF ONE
Wind the key, set it down, and it walks in a slow stubborn left-handed circle until it falls off the table. It has done this for sixty years. It will do this for sixty more. Highly prized. Swap for: anything that goes in a circle on purpose, or a story about a frog.
"the good chair" — per a label nobody wrote
LOT 004 · BULKY
Twelve of twenty-eight, each one painted with a different bird instead of pips. You cannot play dominoes with these. You can lay them out and name the birds. Swap for: the other half, a different incomplete game, or a deck of cards with a duplicate.
In rough order of how much I'd like it. None of this is a requirement. The system is squinting, remember.
if it's weird, lead with that. always lead with the weird.
The ghostly ones. Gone now. Listed for the record — a ledger that forgets its trades isn't a ledger, it's a wishlist.
went to a person with a very good story
LOT 005 · CLOSED
Swapped for a brass doorknob from no door. Then I traded that back into Lot 001. The system, occasionally, eats its own tail.
"finally" — the curator
LOT 006 · CLOSED
Went to someone who had its twin. They sent a polaroid of the pair, reunited. I have pinned it above the ledger desk. This is the best outcome the system can produce and it happens maybe twice a year.