A Scrap

Last Sunday I was at the old house, packing up my desk. The desk was a gift from The Man for Valentine's Day one year and probably the best gift he ever gave me.  He built it with plywood and 2 by 4s and it's not fancy or anything but It's ginormous. I can't even reach the back when I'm sitting. It's L shaped, I can spread all my shit out and make stuff on it. I like to have everything spread out when I'm working on something, like to be able to just reach for ribbon or ink and have it be right there.

My point is…. It's always… disorganized and jumbled looking to anyone not in my head. It was my clutter zone. ALL ME. Scraps of paper, empty pain cans, altoid tins, bits of fabric and ribbon, ancient photographs hanging out right alongside current ones as if the people had ever met, pressed flowers and leaves, little notes from my daughter, ticket stubs, old record covers, signs, stuff, LOVED stuff, etc and so on.

I don't get to have a desk like that in the new house and that's okay. But packing that stuff always makes me more melancholy than all the rest. The rest is really props. If that makes sense.

Now I have to figure out where to put all of it. What to keep. What to let go. What's me and what's not mine at all.

The Man has a box like this. It's the size of a man's shoe box. Has some childhood photos. Pictures of his nephew as a baby and him as an awkward boy. Pictures of him living in Hawaii and him with laughable giant lamb chops. Pictures The Girls have drawn for him, a tiny scrapbook with pg13 naughty pictures of me, random invention drawings and the like…And every pay stub he's ever earned.

I don't know. It says something. The sum of us maybe.  Eh. I imagine going through this stuff will stir shit up for me. (as if I need help with that) I imagine blogs will follow.

For now, here's something I found in an otherwise empty journal.



We never had one another as much s we did when that's all we had. I paced across my dreams of what I could do with my life as a warrior treading hot coals. With you on my shoulder. Your inconsolable cries drowned out the hiss and smell of burned flesh and I knew I could go anywhere, do anything necessary for you and it wouldn't be enough.