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i was feeling all GUNG-HO industrious and shit, pulled out the boxes from the back of the closet, fully intending to throw away whatever was inside in order to make way for a new life, in order to lighten my load and get myself in a new york state of mind. i pulled back the cardboard covers and found a huge artwork i'd made for my mother- a deadbed/rosebed i made in the weeks after her death; a huge collection of crocheted roses in varying sizes and shades of red, displayed on a piece of dark red felt on the floor which was cut to the exact dimensions of the bed she died in, a bed which i layed down next to her in and crocheted red roses and lay them on her thin chest the last day she was alive.
there's no fucking way i can get rid of something like that! there's just no way! it's impossible! i texted my sister in a panic because there's also really no way to bring my entire art collection to the east coast (at least not initially) and asked her if she had any space at all in the back of a closet in her house where i could store some art for a time. sweetheart that she is, she said yes immediately and told me not to get stressed out about this stuff; "i'll make room for whatever you want to keep, sweet sister" she wrote. i breathed a deep sigh of relief but still this strange anxiety. it takes a lot out of me to go through these boxes, these memories, these secrets, the evidence of a life... of lives.
i went through the red suitcase that houses tons of saved photographs and postcards. there were some old scraps of paper with messy notes to self scrawled across them that i easily tossed in to the recycle bin, and a few books given to me by a long-forgotten acquaintance that i never got around to reading due to sheer lack of interest which are now sitting on the sidewalk in front of my house. then, i came across my 23 page poem-thing/manuscript that i haven't worked on since i left my last relationship. i shoved it into this suitcase and then the suitcase was shoved into a tiny storage unit where it sat silently for close to a year. i couldn't bare to read it once i brought it home. i sifted through the pages tonight, skipping the intensely sad parts, but thinking that i really should go back to it, dive in, see if i can finish the thing...
going through all this... it's an entire life! it's who i've been and where i've come from. it's the residue and evidence of my growth, of my Becoming. it's the maps i've used. it's the maps i made for myself with words and images and the sweet postcards that came to me from friends. how do i get rid of these things? and should i even be trying to do such a thing??? they are not trinkets and baubles, they are meaningful objects. objects which contain the spirit of a Past, a Family, a Mother, a Daughter, and the puzzle of love and loss. it's a diary.
and then there's THAT. my diary! it's humongous! i've been keeping a daily diary for more than 6 years. i don't even dream of parting with these volumes of scribbles and rants. not for a second. but they definitely pose a bit of a predicament for someone who was hoping to move by airplane with two bags of luggage. hahaha! that's certainly beginning to seem a bit unrealistic. i'm feeling a bit like Anais Nin right now wondering what the fuck to do with a diary that needs a suitcase all to itself. :) i'm glad i still have almost 6 weeks to figure it out but that's not really much time at all. 6 weeks is nothing.
sigh...
and i'm not even complaining. not at all. i'm looking forward to this change so much! i am exhilarated! i'm ecstatic! i've been wanting to do this for so long and i am overjoyed that the day when i can hop on a plane with a one-way ticket to new york in my hand is almost here. and the fact that brian and i are doing this together makes it even better. i'm so glad that i'm doing this with my best-friend. now, if i could only find a way to shrink all these things down and make them miniature-sized! i truly do want to make room for a new life, a new world.
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