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evilE
Jan. 3, 2004
I was in the car with Stepdad & the family, we were driving around San
Antonio. We went past these fields of citron trees, and then up into
this resort village type place where we talked with this Amish-
looking lady, I was talking about hot springs & wine tasting.
--------
Weetabix had a poignant diaryland entry today. I know how she feels,
and I'm just sick thinking about the empty hope chest that used to
have my treasures in it,and where are they now? But then I've also
got the Pace anti-stuff thing going on too. Stuff is...blah.
--------
__2004-01-02
Detritus
I was supposed to work today, but instead, celebrated the fact that
my vacation and sick time
have refreshed and took a vacation day. I had a plan, of course, I
always have a plan. It was full
of such good intentions, involving the laundry and hanging artwork in
the kitchen and most
importantly, tackling Computer Room #1, which is a time capsule of my
former lives, all
contained in boxes and bookshelves and scary piles of randomness. And
my passport is in there
somewhere too. I hope.
But, the truth of the matter is that I don't feel quite right.
Yesterday, Esteban and I trekked down
to the valley to shop, and quite honestly, he was driving really
sloppily, without very much control
on the steering wheel and lots of speeding up and slowing down and
then by the time he pointed
the car toward home, I was breathing out my mouth and rolling down
the car window, despite the
fact that it was 34 degrees outside. The motion sickness subsided by
the time we got home, but
then I made the mistake of watching him play Grand Theft Auto on the
Xbox, which was just the
push I needed to turn completely green and be unable to look at the
television or computer
screens or sit in the rocking chair or anything but lie very still
with a cold compress on my
forehead and an ice pack behind my neck.
And I've been fragile ever since, although I can't really tell if I
was susceptible to the motion
sickness because I wasn't feeling good in the first place or if I'm
just a spinny-headed idiot. Either
way, it makes for a very nonproductive day.
I did make bread though. That's a slight positive. Warm bread with
melted butter seemed to be
the only thing that could quell the reenactment of "The Perfect
Storm" happening in my tummy,
therefore who am I to argue.
Also, I wandered around St. Vincent de Paul, which is something I
love to do if I have free time.
There's something very beautiful about the stuff no one wants
anymore. You just start picking up
these mind pictures about the former owners, can hear their voices
floating in the air above the
racks and racks of 80's prom dresses and 50's grandma house dresses.
In some ways, it's like
digging through your own history. This time, I found a copy of the
same C Flute instruction book I
used to learn how to play flute in fourth grade. There wasn't a name
on it, but there were dates
on each of the exercises 1982 and 1983. It wasn't mine, because my
book was covered with
practice stickers. You got one sticker for every three hours you
practiced. I used to lie, and say
I'd practice three times more than I really did, because I felt it
was a ripoff that you didn't get
something for every hour you practiced. The stickers were day glo
orange and green inventory
stickers that the music guy had stamped with a harp and cross, since
I went to a parochial
school. Ironically, I did find a trumpet book with those same day glo
orange and green harp/cross
stickers on the cover. It had to belong to a boy since the ancient
music guy would only let girls
take flute, clarinet or French horn. I remember this specifically
because when I had wanted to
take saxophone, he asked me if I was a little boy or a little girl.
He asked me what my favorite
outfit was. I replied that it was a blue dress with a silver belt and
he handed me a flute.
Whenever I see names on things, I have this overwhelming urge to find
those people, call them
up and say "Here I found your Foundations of Arithmetic book from
1978! Enjoy!" because it
just boggles my mind that you would willingly let such intimate
portals into your past go away
without a fight. When push comes to shove, for most of us, the only
thing that will be left of us in
three hundred years will be our stuff. And not the stuff that you
want to be remembered for, like
your class ring or your school photographs. No. It will be anonymous
stuff, like your Barbie
dream date game or your dresser, where you hid your porn collection
under your handkerchiefs
and dress socks. That's the material dandruff that keeps going, with
or without us, that's the stuff
that has permanence, even after it's been sent away on the Goodwill
truck or to languish in your
parent's mildewed basement.
The human brain has a great vault in which it stores every single
moment, every utterance of
your entire life. Sometimes I wonder what a physical storeroom of our
every possession would
look like. It would have everything you ever purchased, ever received
under the Christmas tree
or as a prize for pinning the tail on the donkey. There would be
tables containing legions of
goldfish, each swimming merrily in perpetual circles in their own
little bowls. There might be an
entire mile of clothes, hanging from smallest to tallest sizes, next
to shelves upon shelves of
every book you ever owned, including your baby book and the Pokey
Little Puppy and that
tattered copy of Are You There God, It's Me Margaret that you had
checked out of the library and
then left accidentally on the bus and had to pay for out of your
allowance.
I have very few reoccurring dreams, but one of my favorite themes is
when I suddenly stumble
upon a cache of old stuff just like that. The one I remember most
clearly was a dream in which I
learned suddenly that my Mafia Grandmother never did sell my great-
grandmother's house (the
one my great-grandfather built) in the early nineties, but instead,
it had been sitting there empty
all of this time. Someone had neglected to tell me that it was really
mine. And I wandered
through the empty musty rooms, up the stairs, into her bedroom, where
there were a row of deep
closets that had sloping backs due to the slant of the roof. Even in
real life, those closets seemed
to go on forever, getting shorter and shorter, very Alice in
Wonderland. And now that they were
emptied of her cedar chest containing her wedding dress, and the
mountains of ancient quilts
and feather pillows, I could see that there wasn't really a sloped
ceiling at all. In fact, it was a
whole other room! I turned the corner and then, voila, stacks upon
stacks of our history. There
were cases of costume jewelry glittering under dust, there was an
entire wall of trophy fish
caught by my great grandfather (a legendary sportsman). And then
another larger room with
every ancient lamp, every stick of furniture from ancestors long
passed. The signs from my great
grandparent's and great great grandmother's restaurants and taverns.
The jukebox still
containing Glenn Miller and Jimmy Dorsey. Every letter ever written
by my uncle in the Great
War. Everything. It was all there, waiting for me to uncover them.
I thought about buying two old pairs of ice skates (one black and one
white) which would have
looked cool hanging in our breezeway, but then I decided it would
have been too antiquey, too
country kitsch and not match the rest of the house. Besides,
currently the breezeway is just being
used as a very large soda cooler. Instead I just dropped $5 in the
donation box and left.
They say that Generation X is the first to be fixated with recovering
their childhoods, fixating
upon the past. The Boomers are so quick to move on to the next new
thing, swallow whole the
world and leave whatever is left in their wake to those who go after
them. But maybe we are the
first to get how ephemeral life is. Maybe we just understand
everything that was lost. Maybe we
never wanted it taken from us in the first place.
Comments:
Jack - email - 2004-01-02 21:49:55
score! first to comment!
* * * * * * * * * * *
Lea - email - 2004-01-02 23:21:14
ahh yes I also remember, Mr. God, this is Anna.
* * * * * * * * * * *
William - email - 2004-01-02 23:39:21
The nice thing about such a storehouse is that we could all have our
pasts back and then your husband wouldn't
have to go to large animal showrooms with other nerds to ogle thier
thrown away Yoda action figures now worth
small fortunes.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Rishi - email - 2004-01-02 23:52:24
I don't know about you, but I ended up playing the flute into my
freshman year of college even though I wanted to
be a cool bass chick. It's amazing how the wrong instrument can piss
you off so much. Did you ever end up playing
sax? They're almost identical fingerings, you know.
* * * * * * * * * * *
ex-stripper - email - 2004-01-02 23:57:32
I love that entry!
* * * * * * * * * * *
Gwendolyn - email - 2004-01-02 23:59:25
Today I finally unpacked the only remaining boxes of keepsakes from
our childhoods into new bookshelves.It has
all been in storage for at least ten years. I keep going over things
in my head that I could just kick myself for
donating. I wish I could bring some of it back so much. My Strawberry
Shortcake stuff for my girls. My prom
dress. What was I thinking? Darn my minimalist tendencies.
* * * * * * * * * * *
johnniev - email - 2004-01-03 10:50:40
Many times St. Vincent De Paul gets the contents of houses, after the
owners have died. It's funny how the value of
something drops to zero when the owner is no longer there to cherish
it.
