Time Capsule: Part II

We're down to having an old door and a dining chair left in storage.  Yes, as of Thursday, it is stilled screwed to the wall.  For the second time Robbie had to ask that the screw be removed so that we can clear out the storage room.  If the screw isn't removed by tomorrow, I'll be taking matters into my own hands and cutting a small slit in the fabric advertisement covering the screw head. 

The past week has been an archeological dig.  Going through box after box of paper work. Layer upon layer of the detritus of thirty years piled in desk drawers and banker's boxes.  The worst part (other than the threat of breathing in toxic mold) is that I don't know the person who squirreled away so much crap!  I found a get well card signed by four people that for the life of me I can't recall. There are old pictures of people that I no longer keep in touch with and some are of people that I have no idea who the are.  Maybe I should scan and post them to see if anyone reading this recognizes who they are. 

There are notebooks from the beginnings of my college years/decades, along with grades from those classes.  Transcripts, promissory notes, book receipts, syllabi from a several classes (would anyone care what my assignments were for psychology 101?) and just crap that I've held onto.  Why?  What in the world was I thinking in keeping all that stuff?  Do I really need to know what doors to keep open in the ceramics lab while firing bisque?  Especially since the art department moved to a new building almost ten years ago.

Some of the crap is just painful to go through.  I've found letters from cousins from when I first started college.  There are letters from my mother - always starting off with "you received this letter(s) a couple of weeks ago, but I keep putting off going to the post office".  Several of them included notes from my youngest brother - the most poignant was the one that read "Mark had a 'hard-attack' last week and died."  I couldn't figure out who Mark was and I panicked that I had forgotten some great detail of my life until I got to mother's letter and she told me that my brother's pet Finch Mork had died and she was glad to be rid of the mess that the bird made.  I have unfinished letters never sent (Lord, I hope I never sent them) to old girlfriends - scathing, nasty ones in some cases.  I reached the point that I started running everything through the shredder without reading the contents.

I've shredded old bank statements and the accompanying canceled checks - remember when banks did that? - from when I first went to work for Bank One back in '94.  I really don't think I need to keep the checks I wrote to Target any longer even thought they should be happy that I've been such a consistent and loyal customer all this time.  I even came across a receipt for a loan payment from 1980.  Really?  I kept that?  All the paper I've shredded the past week has filled a large garbage can, and I'm not finished.  It's good that trash pickup is only a couple of days away.

Am I shredding my past?  Will I regret this years from now?  I think the answer to both is no.  I've not missed any of the crap for at least seven years which is a pretty good indicator that I can continue to live with out most of it.  Pictures I'll keep.  Some books I'll keep.  Tax returns go without saying.  Other things that still have a use may be kept, but more than likely they'll get donated.  I'm tired of dragging this stuff around both physically and emotionally.  I think I've said this before, but I'll say it again: nostalgia isn't for me.  I think it's too easy to get caught up in the past and miss out on what is happening now.  And honestly, they're just boxes full of the dried up old bones of the person I once was.  Time to bury them for good.

Time Capsule: Part I

We finally decided that we had spent enough money on a storage closet over the past seven years.  We originally planned on having it for a short time and move the remaining furniture and various other things to Chicago when we got settled in.  It never happened.  We got there, found the apartment furnished fully and decided that we would keep the dining room furniture in storage until we moved off campus or back to Indiana.  Off campus was not an option once we realized that we could never afford anything close to where we worked or that was habitable.  And because it was all there and out of sight, it was just easier to pay a few dollars a month instead of dealing with getting rid of it.

So here we are, seven years later with a storage closet full of crap.  Literally.  We opened it up recently to give away the table and chairs - the house we bought doesn't have a dining room and the eat in kitchen isnt' big enough for a double pedestal table with a built in butterfly leaf and six chairs - and discovered that some vermin of unknown species had decided to use an antique upholstered chair as a litter box.  We also were only able to give five of the six chairs away when we discovered that the storage company had done some work sometime in the past and screwed the sixth chair to the wall from the outside.  It's unmovable until they remove the screw from the wall.

Over the weekend, we started pulling the rest of our belongings out of "climate controlled" storage unit.  I'm telling you right now that we would have been better off either putting things in a garden shed in a friends back yard or just setting things on fire.  Comforters were so riddled with mold and mildew that we couldn't really tell what color they originally were - into the dumpster they went.  Wood furniture has mold growing on the legs. Books in boxes are so stench filled that I'm hesitant to bring them in past the garage until I can figure out how to deodorize them.

Some of the stuff that I originally put into storage I now wonder why the hell I was keeping it in the first place.  I have a rocking chair that I had envisioned going into Riley's nursery.  It has rockers that are chewed up (they were that way when I got it) and an upholstered seat that just doesn't seem like it'll be worth the effort anymore.  It is an Arts & Crafts style that some wisdom filled person in it's past decided to "antique" with a faux paint job.  I'm guessing from the American Eagle decal that it was last done in the 70's.  Stripping it down to the original laminate wood veneer seems like such a waste of time that I am in short supply of anyway.

I've also been finding paperwork dating back over 15 years and pictures going back almost 30.  The pictures are a hoot.  The paperwork not so much.  What the hell do I need with a letter from BMG music service letting me know that I can send back a selection by filling out the attached paperwork?  What cassette-yes cassette-was it that I mistakenly received?  I have no idea, but I still have the paperwork to send it back if I remember and find it.  Yesterday was spent going through boxes deciding what stays, what is trash and what can be donated.  Most of it is trash.  Why do we/I keep a hold of these things for so long?  I may burn up a paper shredder before I'm done purging.  And if you know of anyone that needs a Frisbee collection, let me know.

Hang in there or let go already

It must be the Gemini in me.  I've been looking at this leaf that is still hanging on to our flowering pear tree growing in the front yard.  It has turned brown from the cold of winter.  And yet it still is hanging there, swaying whenever the slightest breeze passes by.  Snapping to and fro like a pennant when the wind picks up.  It's the last one left on the tree and makes me wonder what it's doing just hanging there.  I keep thinking it should just let go already and turn itself into compost.

Then I find myself watching it sway gently in the January sun and minutes have gone by.  There's something mesmerizing about that damned leaf.  I've actually been watching it for at least 15 days, waiting for the falling temperatures to finally snap the bond between the leaf and the branch - so far not happening.  So now my blog has turned into "Leaf Watch 2010" which makes me akin to the local weather forecasters who take a certain glee in turning any snowstorm with the potential of over an inch of accumulation into a piece of hyperbole hopefully unrivaled by their peers.  Amateurs.

"OK.  So now what?" they ask.  Is there some major decision that he's been vacillating on?  Or is it as simple as being in the moment and enjoying the random beauty of a solitary leaf oscillating in the breeze on a gray winter's day.  Maybe it's watching others around weighing their options for the thousandth time and wondering what is it that makes it so hard for them to make a decision. 

Ah.  But that's just the problem, isn't it.  It's easy to make the decision for others when you don't have anything at stake.  For the outside observer, things may be very black and white but more often than not there are so many various shades of gray that it's difficult for the person inside the situation to see the edges of the problem (or sometimes problems) as they all seem to fade into one large pool of indecisiveness in which the person doesn't even realize they are drowning.  (See what I mean about hyperbole? Amateurs.)

I don't have anyone specific in mind.  I just have several friends that I know are unhappy in their current situations.  Some of them are trying to figure out their professional lives ("...and what do you want to be when you grow up?")  Some of them just have a general malaise around their love life.  Either they're in a relationship that they don't want to be in or they want to be in one and aren't.  Then there are the friends who are having trouble believing that the grass isn't greener elsewhere and can't see that what they have is pretty weed free. 

I had a friend years ago that owned his own business.  He noticed that I would always make the same laps around the store to look at things whenever I came in.  One day he told me to walk my usual path the in the opposite direction.  I couldn't believe all the new things they had.  Only it wasn't new merchandise, but I had trained my eye to only look in the same direction and missed everything else.  The trick is to not change where you are, but to take a different way of looking at what's right in front of you.  Or at least look at things differently before changing where you are and then you can decide if you want to hang on a while longer, or let go already.

In case you're wondering, I'm just trying to decide what it is I need to write about.  And not on this blog.  Some things require much more space than I want to give here.  I'm lazy that way.  Up next time, a continuation (Sher says FINALLY!) of "Connecting the Dots."  Until then...