Saturday, September 26, 2009

victoria's secret is that she sucks at filing

 
Things I adore:

  • Sitting down to write and hearing The Sister yell "Hey, do you want to see the world's most pornographic eggplant?"
  • Dedicating an entire Saturday to the Hitchcockathon (Strangers on a Train, Lifeboat, and North by Northwest) with the family.
  • Shredding paper in my paper shredder; seriously, sometimes I kind of want to hug it.

Having a shredder raises some questions, though, like: should I shred my expired Driver's License? I suspect that yes is the correct answer, but I can't bring myself to do it. The new licenses just look so janky and stupid and ugly! Irrational, yes. And the opposite of ruthless. I'm not ready for this.

What I am ready for is the shredding and shredding of useless documents. I'm even shredding some things I saved last week during the great "mom box" excavation, like report cards and CTBS test score reports. What's harder to destroy are things like playbills, notes from friends and family, newspaper clippings, birthday cards. Where do we cross the line from shaking off the baggage of Stuff (capital s) into eradicating all the mementos of a life? Ruthlessness has its price, I suppose.

Or maybe employing ruthlessness in ridding ourselves of unnecessary things leads to a reward instead. Maybe the things we hold have power over us in ways we don't notice. If I chucked everything in these boxes and piles into the garbage, I'd be done in a day. I could live in a van and travel, unfettered, in that manner of books and nomads, beatniks and folk songs. I often wonder: could I survive without the stability and the comforts of home? I can't be the only person who thinks about life on the road and chooses a home instead. Maybe it isn't the loss of security we fear, but the misplacing and erasing of our pasts.

Tonight, I can only whittle away at these bits here, remove a few to the garbage, and save the rest.

Moving along now...

... but still speaking of sentimental mementos (sentimementalos?), permit me to briefly brag about my friend Tamara, who is amazing. Among the scores of cool stuff she does, she also handcrafts birthday cards for people. I found two, one from this year and one from last year. The 2008 edition birthday is R-rated, and I've yet to decide if a parental warning will need to apply to this project, but the 2009 version is completely suitable for family viewing and makes me really really happy:

 
 
tokens from Tam-mark, 2009

And in other news, once this Sub-Project is complete, I can't wait to organize my notes from the various political conventions, caucuses, meetings, speeches, classes, groups, and functions I've attended over the last two years. And before you think the shredder is the only appliance deserving of praise, I'm so glad the scanner is a copier, because the CCRCC minutes from the December 2008 meeting are too crumpled to go into a binder when that time comes:


mmm, crumply

Abruptly, I penetrated a new stratum and reached papers from 2007. Or, at least, a mountain of Victoria's Secret receipts from that autumn. Before you get excited, please know that these many many purchases were of the tees-and-tanks-and-lip-gloss variety; turns out the men in my life are weirded out when I introduce lingerie into our interactions, contrary to what Cosmo would have me believe.

And so there I am, home on a Saturday night, contemplating life and romance and trash and trashy outfits, and thinking that I'd like to live in the house with the tree swing and a man who loves me and thinks I'm sexy. Or in a van with a dog and no idea about the next adventure.

What are the chances I'll figure it out by the time these piles are filed?
 

3 comments:

J3SS said...

you know me, I picked the dogs. :)

Bryan said...

I really hear you on wanting to live in a van & travel like a beatnik.

Syd said...

Since you actually know at least one person who lived out of a van (well, on the road, anyway, once his van died) for three+ years, you might want to chat with him about the pluses and minuses of said lifestyle. Because it does, in a way, sound very freeing...but you give up a lot, and I don't think it's just Stuff that gets left behind.

But do we all think about it at some point? I'm pretty sure the answer is yes! :)