Cleaning house

You know that door in your house that's always closed? The door behind which lies the room that your guests never see because you need a place to hurriedly throw your things at the last minute, shutting the door as quickly as you can behind you? Mine is my study. This week I have taken on the mission of cleaning this room.

I was fortunate to have someone helping me, someone who could hold open garbage bags as I pitched item after item. Someone who attached no value to the objects and stacks of paper that had covered every imaginable surface in the room. Someone who did not get lost in reverie over each souvenir or poem that turned up. Someone in front of whom I would not cry when coming across strange old notes in my handwriting: Darling, here is a copy of my itinerary for my next several trips, with a table of dates, flights, and hotel numbers and whatnot. Be safe on your trips as well; miss you already just thinking about the weeks ahead. Can’t wait until this is all over and we can just be together. All my love...

Man, there was a lot of stuff. I threw away a lot of stuff. And with each piece of stuff that I held in my hands before tossing it, I had a little flashback of the time in my life surrounding that piece.

Where does it all go? I look in the mirror and find there nothing to show for all of it except a few gray hairs (not ‘grey’, not if you’re talking about hairs) and some puffiness and dark circles under my eyes. Looking at my current life I see that it is, prima facie, very simple-- so deceptively so that even I have come to underestimate the depth of my experience.

It feels weird to think that a kid like me could have "a past”. I once had an acquaintance named Jerome who was in some sort of disco-funk R&B group in the 70’s. One night we watched old video footage of his group. Talk about time warp! And they were dancin’, and singin’, and movin’ to the groovin’… oh wait, that’s not the right song; he’s black. And his hair was in a ‘fro that was parted on the side at a perfect right angle (aw, yeah!). That night I said to Jerome something to the effect of “I enjoy knowing so many different kinds of people who have done things that are so freakin’ cool.” His reply really caught me off guard. “Well I am glad to know people like you, who are so young and look at how many amazing things you’ve done already. Just think about that, girl.”

Who, me? I mean, I? I, who have plunged down the waterfalls of Hawaii, have walked the streets of London alone in the wee hours of the morning, have sung in underground tunnels of Prague, have danced the polka with a portly stranger? I, who have fired pistols at sunset, have known the desperation of unrequited love, have driven to Dallas just for dinner and Canada just for lunch, have sampled European brews in Munich, have sunned myself on the banks of an Alaskan river, have danced ballet very poorly, have eaten legendary amounts of meat in a Chilean vineyard? I, who have smelled the smells of Taiwan, have rollerbladed the entire campus of the University of Oklahoma, have brazenly bared my midriff as the lead singer of a funk band, have had my hands deep inside the bellies of some of the fattest people in the world? I, who have played the video games of Tokyo rooftop arcades, have slept in the luggage rack of a bus to Colorado Springs, have sung with a musician called Whitey in a chintzy St. Louis bar, have gotten lost in the shoestore-lined avenues of Madrid, have clambered about the empty carcass of an army tank in Illinois, have bottle-fed cows in a Kansas field, have suffered inconceivably swollen mosquito bites…?

The objects attached to all these memories have now been purged. How much longer will the stories live in me? So long as memory persists, these things that have happened will be reflected in my life at some level-- won't they? Or will they?