A) I'm terribly undisciplined. (Thus, no
blog in three weeks.)
B) I live like an explosion!
In consequence, most of my time is spent trying to tame, organize and
gain control of the explosion.
C) I addicted to ephemera.
~Definition: Ephemera
(singular: ephemeron) is any transitory written or printed matter not meant to
be retained or preserved. The word derives from the Greek, meaning things
lasting no more than a day. Some collectible ephemera are advertising trade
cards, airsickness bags, bookmarks, catalogues, greeting cards, letters,
pamphlets, postcards, posters, prospectuses, stock certificates, tickets and
zines. (Wiki)
I have no idea what a zine is but I’m pretty sure I have one
if it is on that list. I have everything
else on that list, going back to the fifth grade. Seriously.
Piles of it, totes and boxes and trunks full of it, drawers and shoe boxes packed to the brim. Yes, even
an airsickness bag – WITH a letter written on it, circa 1989.
Photographs, scraps of paper with poems and song lyrics on them, notebooks full of class notes, drawings, Dew Drop’s hair and teeth, Bubbah and Mina’s art work and Scout projects. Postcards – you wouldn’t believe the postcards; CA, FL, OK, CO, WY, MT, ID, WA, NV, OR VA, ME, MO, KS, SD, IA, AZ, England, Mexico and Canada. I pick up postcards when I drive to Missoula! Bookmarks – I find them everywhere. Blank paper – reams of binder paper, black covered composition books, note pads, journals, spiral notebooks, post its. It’s like I’m afraid they will stop making paper. Calendars going back to the 90’s. Stickers, coasters, matchbooks, playbills, concert ticket stubs, band cards, etc., from every place I’ve ever been since 1981.
Books. SOOOO many books. I still have the first copy of Jayne Eyre I ever read. 1986. Of course, I NEED a copy of that and it’s nice that every time I’ve read it, it has been that copy. There is a note in it from a friend of mine, who has since passed away (much too young) and it’s special to me. I still have my RED BOOKS. From Jr. high school. People who went to school with me will know how WEIRD that is. Histories – heavy, scholarly histories – for every place I’ve ever lived and places I will never see. Books on fish and birds and ghosts and religions and poetry and music and cooking and gruesome serial killers. Classics and junk paperbacks, fairy tales and biographies, short story anthologies, dictionaries and encyclopedias.
I started a project back in…October? November?…to get all this stuff consolidated into one place. I figured, organized by year and packed neatly into totes; it wouldn’t be that big of deal, right? Well, three giant totes later, with plenty of it tossed into garbage, I’ve barely scratched the surface. Because I live like an explosion, it’s EVERYWHERE and the more I work on it, the more of it I find. I put it all away at Christmas because I realized I had really bitten off a big, ambitious bite and the piles were in the way of the holidays. I’m getting back to it now. Because the holidays are over...ya know, recently…but…terribly undisciplined, so… PLUS, I avoid it. Cuz tis a daunting task and it’s a drag.
Photographs, scraps of paper with poems and song lyrics on them, notebooks full of class notes, drawings, Dew Drop’s hair and teeth, Bubbah and Mina’s art work and Scout projects. Postcards – you wouldn’t believe the postcards; CA, FL, OK, CO, WY, MT, ID, WA, NV, OR VA, ME, MO, KS, SD, IA, AZ, England, Mexico and Canada. I pick up postcards when I drive to Missoula! Bookmarks – I find them everywhere. Blank paper – reams of binder paper, black covered composition books, note pads, journals, spiral notebooks, post its. It’s like I’m afraid they will stop making paper. Calendars going back to the 90’s. Stickers, coasters, matchbooks, playbills, concert ticket stubs, band cards, etc., from every place I’ve ever been since 1981.
Books. SOOOO many books. I still have the first copy of Jayne Eyre I ever read. 1986. Of course, I NEED a copy of that and it’s nice that every time I’ve read it, it has been that copy. There is a note in it from a friend of mine, who has since passed away (much too young) and it’s special to me. I still have my RED BOOKS. From Jr. high school. People who went to school with me will know how WEIRD that is. Histories – heavy, scholarly histories – for every place I’ve ever lived and places I will never see. Books on fish and birds and ghosts and religions and poetry and music and cooking and gruesome serial killers. Classics and junk paperbacks, fairy tales and biographies, short story anthologies, dictionaries and encyclopedias.
I started a project back in…October? November?…to get all this stuff consolidated into one place. I figured, organized by year and packed neatly into totes; it wouldn’t be that big of deal, right? Well, three giant totes later, with plenty of it tossed into garbage, I’ve barely scratched the surface. Because I live like an explosion, it’s EVERYWHERE and the more I work on it, the more of it I find. I put it all away at Christmas because I realized I had really bitten off a big, ambitious bite and the piles were in the way of the holidays. I’m getting back to it now. Because the holidays are over...ya know, recently…but…terribly undisciplined, so… PLUS, I avoid it. Cuz tis a daunting task and it’s a drag.
I can’t analyze why I hold on to it all. I don’t really want to. I’m sure it’s some sort of psychological hoarding issue mumbo jumbo. I get that the item doesn’t hold the memory and all that but I still feel that every scrap tells the story of me. Those things are the entire history of my life:
When I see a matchbook from a bar in Rapid City, SD, I remember our car breaking down there. Honey and I were stranded and we had the BEST adventure that night. The food was good, the music was better; the summer night couldn’t have been more perfect.
When I find the notes from the first time I studied Greek mythology, I remember being 20 – at the LIBRARY – reading everything I could on it. I went on to fall completely in LOVE with Greek mythology, so those pages are like the first notes from what became a very dear friend.
Flipping through an old playbill, I know exactly who I was with and what we were talking about. I love that feeling – that great memory.
Reading travel pamphlets from a place I’ve visited recalls the sound of crashing waves and the smell of the wind off the sea.
I also avoid it because sorting through it all, in this grand organization attempt, can be draining on an emotional level. Not every memory is a good one. There are love notes from old beaus – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. There are pictures of friends long lost. Journals and notebooks full of my own writing from dark and lonely times.
For the most part, looking at the whole, it is the story of a beautiful life. MY beautiful life. Full of all the people I have loved and who have loved me. A time line of where I’ve been and what I was doing there. Full of all the lessons I ever learned. Full of adventures in far flung places I may never see again. Like Mesa, AZ. I feel I’ve learned everything I need to know about that. When I start to think that the desert can be beautiful – because I find a picture of my camp at sunrise in 1999 - I can read on the back of a beautiful post card what I wrote to myself in 1986. How hell hot it was and about the scorpions and I remember that whilst, yes it can be beautiful, for the most part it isn’t for me.
So, if you need to find me, look for me in the piles and stacks of newspapers, football game guides, New Year’s Eve crowns and movie ticket stubs; journals, posters, genealogies and maps; graduation announcements, certificates of merit, birthday cards and packing lists. Beautiful things I have observed, words I felt were meaningful, and what I have found interesting. These things that were meant to be transitory and “lasting no more than a day”. That’s where I’ll be – all of me.
