E-Mail This Article to a Friend Lost and Found (continued)

Q: You said you don’t think you’re such a great finder. Are some people just innately better finders?

A: I think that must be it. Everyone can be a pretty good finder if they just have that sort of awareness, you know? In their everyday wanderings through the world, if they just take a second — you know, when you see a piece of paper lying on the ground, to pick it up and look at it and see if it’s something interesting, and if it is, to send it in to us. My little brother, he didn’t used to find stuff, but once he started looking and then finding stuff, then it just builds on itself. You start noticing things that you didn’t notice before. Even things that aren’t finds — for me, I even notice just people around me. I’m more engaged in the world around me, which is really awesome — it kind of makes everyday life a richer experience. Because usually I’m so caught up in my own head. I think to get from being a pretty decent finder to being one of the all-star finders, that’s some kind of innate talent. It’s a mixture of luck and natural-born ability that’s impossible to identify.

Q: How often do you lose stuff?

A: I’m a far better loser than I am a finder. Like, you should see my room where I’m standing right now. It’s easy to lose stuff here. I lose stuff all the time. So I can also identify with all the people who have lost these things.

Q: Has any of your own stuff been found and mailed back to you?

A: There’s one thing in the book. Actually, that was in Boston, at Berklee Performance Center. It was just so funny to open the envelope; it just looked like all the others that come in, and then the first thing I saw was my own handwriting, and I was just like, "What the hell?" I just knew it immediately. You know your own handwriting. It was a really weird feeling.

Q: What’s your feeling about the people who lose these really personal letters and notes? Do you feel sorry for them? Do you think they’re irresponsible?

A: I think things get lost in a lot of ways. Some of them are thrown out; maybe someone wrote them a really personal letter and they ripped it up. There’s always a story behind how it was even lost, and that’s impossible to know. Someone might’ve gotten kicked out of an apartment and had all their stuff piled on the curb, and blowing down the street. Maybe there was a fire, and all this stuff ended up blowing around. But sometimes you find, like, an album of pictures of children or something, and you’re like, who would throw this away? But because I know I’ve lost a lot of stuff too, I don’t judge the people. It is interesting, also, when you find a ripped-up note, to even try to speculate, okay, did the person who received it tear it up, they hated it that much? Or, equally likely, did the person who wrote it tear it up before they even gave it to the person? Just the fact that it’s laying there in the street is part of the mystery of it.

Q: So do you find yourself making up back-stories for these notes and letters?

A: Absolutely. Because all these notes are just a fragment of a story. You’ll find like the ninth page of a letter, and you’ll wonder what came before it and what came after it.

Q: Does that drive you crazy?

A: It does, but I think in a way that’s a lot of the allure of it. It sort of sparks your imagination. I think so often we have these stories of encounters in TV or movies or anywhere that are wrapped up so neatly in a bow. They have these tidy resolutions. They’re easily digestible, but I think easily forgettable too. Because these stories are all just a fragment, you end up proposing what some of the story is and imagining into it what the story is, and so part of you is mixed up with who your idea of that person is. I literally stay up at night sometimes wondering about some of these people: what happened to them, what’s their story? I’m sort of haunted by the mystery behind each one. They really are riddles. The riddle is both what was going on in the note, but also how did it come to be lost? And sometimes people can look at the same note and come away with totally different ideas about what it’s all about.

Q: Can you ever go out for a walk without constantly being on the lookout for stuff? Can you ever just be outside without doing that?

A: I think the looking isn’t an active looking. Every time I go for a walk, it’s not dominating my mind, the hunting. That’s what I like to encourage in people. Because it’s not realistic to just be going out looking for stuff all the time. It’s this weird balance where I’m always looking, but never actively looking. If I pass by something, I can’t not pick it up. But at the same time, it’s not like walking is constantly interrupted.

Q: Do you have any suggestions for the best places to find stuff in Boston?

A: You just know that kids are great at losing things. And the stuff they lose is often pretty incredible. So in schools or around schools. I really like the campus computer centers, because there are like 100 computers going up to four printers, and people will all print out stuff and then leave so much stuff unclaimed. So I love sifting through that pile next to the printer. I think the recycling bins at Kinko’s, or even in the copiers sometimes. But probably the best place is public transportation, so on the buses or bus stops, or the T or T stops.

Q: There’s some stuff in the book from September 11, from down near Ground Zero. Did September 11, with all the stuff that was found down there, did that change the way you look at any of the stuff that you find?

A: Certainly that stuff. I mean, that was just incredible, to have an event like that where these buildings come down, and the only thing that survives the devastation is paper, which we just think of as the flimsiest thing in the world. It’s so bizarre, really. I was in New York then, and sifting through stuff on the street, everything would have a poignancy to it, even just accounting paper with numbers on it. Or there would be some to-do list and clearly those things you know would never get done. It was really powerful. For everyone who lived in New York who was finding this stuff too, I think, it turned many of them on to the idea that this stuff laying in the street has great meaning in it, isn’t just trash.

Davy Rothbart appears at the Brookline Booksmith on September 16, at 7 p.m. Call (617) 566-6660. Visit the Found Web site at www.foundmagazine.com. Tamara Wieder can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com