Alchemic Verse

The house is being fixed up and shown, and I have 3 carloads, 3.5? To make 1. The end was a mad dash to just box and bag, clear surfaces, and make room. Last night and tonight, I’ll be musing on the last choices, what really makes “the cut”, what can be left behind or replaced, endlessly repacking mentally while the dim sky alternately pours and pauses in the dark.

The mental car tetris whirls from the bedroom that became mine when the ongoing tragedy of my time at my mother’s/childhood home became too much to bear. I left in a snow storm, my brother’s Subaru Outback filled with only clothes and the personal effects I couldn’t leave behind [hmmm] lest they be cruelly dealt with in the aftermath or otherwise lost to me.

I slept on the floor of this room the first few days, and then my dad and I painted the neon green walls deep blue and made it my dream room, a needed sanctuary for years to come… and now again, 20 years after those sleeping-bagged nights on the carpet, so much more relieved and restful than the nights in my old bed.

The room and its contents are not so different now as they were then, emblems of the stories that shaped younger me’s everywhere – band posters I brought in the sleighbaru, old perfume, the glass butterfly I was given to remember a friend long passed, collectibles and video games, old CDs and vinyl, art purchased at street festivals and conventions, stuffed animals, the odd forgotten artifact. I’ll photo a lot of it, the lore being bottomless.

This dusty bookshelf also features an impressive pile of diaries that provide a powerful window into my mind at 16ish/17ish years old, on through my mid-twenties.

Resume mental car tetris – what can go, what should stay, or be repacked/consolidated?

The diaries should make the cut.