Love Songs in Age
It’s not that I’m surprised about how my life fits neatly into a few little boxes – I’ve moved far too many times for that. It’s not that I feel sad about the change, the shift away from the place where I grew up. There have been many bad memories here, as many as good ones, and I want to wash their lingering odour off my skin.
Mainly it’s that I find myself startled at just how much I have to throw away.
I work in an unpredictable environment and I live in a family which brings new meanings to the words spontaneous and crazy. Colour me boring, but I like to have a little anchored-ness in the life I lead.
I hate pretending permanence – putting up pictures and posters and knick knacks when I’m really living out of a suitcase. Because then I have to rip them all out when I move on, like the delicate roots of young grass just growing from seed. I would rather eat off paper plates and sleep on a rolled up sleeping bag than have to return heavy crockery and marshmallow-fat pillows when the time comes to leave. I have, in fact, done just that.
So when I find a place that I can truly call home for a little while, I keep things. Too many things. Little ripped tickets and labels, receipts and pieces of plastic, all reminders of places I have been, places I can’t even remember any more. I keep so much shit that an Ikea bio-degradable plastic bag bio-degraded on my bookshelf. I had to pull the little smithereens out like handfuls of feathers, like seventh month ash.
But this time it’s different. This time I don’t have the space I used to, I don’t have the time or energy that I used to to keep my belongings catalogued and to handle them everyday, remembering stories in their grooves and pits.
I was stoic tonight, as I threw my things away, steadily, one by one.
Large, spiral-bound organisers with important birthdays and exams circled in glitter pens, notes from old friends scribbled teasingly in the margins. Glossy day books with creamy pages faced with paintings of dreamy, smudged Impressionism. The one I loved of the woman holding the umbrella on a wind-tossed hill. The notebooks I wrote little notes in: “You may only invite a lower minister to an event when a higher minister has declined. Only when all that fails can you turn to a grassroots leader.”.
A clock that once meant something to me and now sits on a low shelf, lined with grey fluff.
Chip runs among the boxes, wondering at our jerky movements to fill them up. His bad ear flops with each step. I’m so glad I don’t have to pack him into a box to bring him with me.
Everyday, pieces of someone who I was, who I am, fall into the bin to be lost forever. I thought I would mourn all those things – the long lists I used to make, the drawings of every random thing.
But I have collected and thrown away and found and lost and ached and hurt over so many precious, secret things that it’s all become a blur. I once believed that you defined and steadied yourself in the special things you made or kept.
Now, I’ve learned the only core you can truly root yourself to is the one that sits deep inside your mind.
Mainly it’s that I find myself startled at just how much I have to throw away.
I work in an unpredictable environment and I live in a family which brings new meanings to the words spontaneous and crazy. Colour me boring, but I like to have a little anchored-ness in the life I lead.
I hate pretending permanence – putting up pictures and posters and knick knacks when I’m really living out of a suitcase. Because then I have to rip them all out when I move on, like the delicate roots of young grass just growing from seed. I would rather eat off paper plates and sleep on a rolled up sleeping bag than have to return heavy crockery and marshmallow-fat pillows when the time comes to leave. I have, in fact, done just that.
So when I find a place that I can truly call home for a little while, I keep things. Too many things. Little ripped tickets and labels, receipts and pieces of plastic, all reminders of places I have been, places I can’t even remember any more. I keep so much shit that an Ikea bio-degradable plastic bag bio-degraded on my bookshelf. I had to pull the little smithereens out like handfuls of feathers, like seventh month ash.
But this time it’s different. This time I don’t have the space I used to, I don’t have the time or energy that I used to to keep my belongings catalogued and to handle them everyday, remembering stories in their grooves and pits.
I was stoic tonight, as I threw my things away, steadily, one by one.
Large, spiral-bound organisers with important birthdays and exams circled in glitter pens, notes from old friends scribbled teasingly in the margins. Glossy day books with creamy pages faced with paintings of dreamy, smudged Impressionism. The one I loved of the woman holding the umbrella on a wind-tossed hill. The notebooks I wrote little notes in: “You may only invite a lower minister to an event when a higher minister has declined. Only when all that fails can you turn to a grassroots leader.”.
A clock that once meant something to me and now sits on a low shelf, lined with grey fluff.
Chip runs among the boxes, wondering at our jerky movements to fill them up. His bad ear flops with each step. I’m so glad I don’t have to pack him into a box to bring him with me.
Everyday, pieces of someone who I was, who I am, fall into the bin to be lost forever. I thought I would mourn all those things – the long lists I used to make, the drawings of every random thing.
But I have collected and thrown away and found and lost and ached and hurt over so many precious, secret things that it’s all become a blur. I once believed that you defined and steadied yourself in the special things you made or kept.
Now, I’ve learned the only core you can truly root yourself to is the one that sits deep inside your mind.
She said, she said at 11:58 pm
3 Comments:
Amen sista!
But hoarding is always fun too! :D And I sorta think that the whole pack-repack circle of life is part of being multifaceted. It's being able to recreate manifestations of yourself...and your home, or room at least, is you...your sanctuary. And it's important that your sanctuary can remind you of what makes you, you...in those times when sometimes you're not entirely sure.
I agree with Paws.
Sometimes you forget the little random precious memories.
And with a single note or wrapper or travel ticket, it can trigger off those buried away memories - like secret roadmaps of your precious history with a special someone.
There are a few little treasures that I still have (which I've managed to hoarde from a certain dragonlady who threw away so much of my treasures - I can never forgive her) and I can't possibly throw them away - simply because in my darkest of hours, they remind me oh who I am at the core, my essence and the dreams and wishes I have, buried deep within me, which I may have forgotten.
That's all so true...I've been clearing up my stuff recently too, and am surprised by how much easier it is now than it was over a year ago...Even smallest thing is loaded with sentimental value, it's overwhelming to consider the events,emotions and people associated with every single object. Guess over time, it becomes somewhat necessary to detach ourselves a little, and throw some of the things away, while keeping others as a tangible reminder of what used to be.
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