9.23.2010

flotsam

9" x  12"
some days, more than others, i catch myself dazedly wondering: what could it all possibly mean.  like, really, seriously, i want to know: what is the meaning of life.  when the sky stays at ten percent grey all day, and the leaves begin to shrivel off the trees to form a patchwork of yellows against the blackest concrete, it feels like the day never really begins.  three cups of tea barely keep the eyes ajar, and the list of lists never gets written.  it's that season again, time to hunker down, rake the leaves, stoke the fires, bundle up, and wait for spring all over again.

and then there's this:  i wonder sometimes when i go upstairs and look at all the boxes i've stowed away: whats inside that box?  for some reason or another, i am the receiver of goods.  i've been put here to go through stuff.  i've collected castaways, oh lordy have i collected, the feathers and photos and fabric and flotsam are my little love affairs i've tucked away to revisit, on another day. and i've been the chosen one, the one to sort the belongings of my loved ones who have died.  i have more stuff than i can even catalog mentally, and it can be unnerving at times.  i can open a box on a brave evening, and soon enough find my self sobbing on the ground in a sea of chotchkies and crumpled newspaper.  some of what's left behind when you die is a legacy of stuff, the stuff you've loved and lived with and cared for and collected, the stuff that memories are made of.  and if my stuff is any testament to who i've loved and how hard i've loved them, then i suppose i should feel mighty grateful.  yet when i look around upstairs, what it amounts to is sometimes nothing more than an ocean of brown cardboard boxes.  and still, i keep on searchin.

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