This weekend was spent packing for The Big Move that's happening next Saturday. Packing is really an astounding thing, because you wind up finding things that you never knew you had, stuff you were keeping for sentimental reasons that no longer have any significance in your life whatsoever, things you borrowed from people but now can't remember exactly who, and stuff that sparks memories of events that spur warm memories - or perhaps are better left forgotten.
Packing is both cathartic and frustrating. I find myself continually wondering why I own so much stuff. Why do I need three copies of the same book? Why do I have all this yarn - do I REALLY think I am going to learn to knit one day? Why do I still have unopened mail from my last address - where I haven't lived since September 2000? It's AMAZING how much crap I have. I have packed box upon box of books and there is no end in sight.
The one thing that I have really enjoyed about packing was going through all the stuff that was tucked in the sides of my mirror. Plane tickets, concert tickets, movie stubs, postcards, flyers, pictures. Everything holds a memory... the stub from going to Second City with my friend Jeff, my plane ticket for coming home from my vacation to attend my brother's wedding, the note that was attached to flowers that Rod sent me after my grad show. These are things I'm sad about discarding, but I can't convince myself that there is any real reason to keep them outside of nostalgia.
Memories are weird. I was talking to my dad last night; we were chatting about betting and gambling. I came in second in my office basketball pool for this year's March Madness, knowing nothing at all about basketball. My dad was telling me about having gone to Buffalo in the fifties and gambling away $300 at the racetrack. I have a really vague memory of my dad taking my brother and me to Newport when I was about 13 to see jai alai. I remember that I won $28 - knowing nothing about jai alai. I have NO idea why I remember this event outside of that jai alai is a very weird sport and it was a one-time thing... but going to Second City was a one-time thing and I didn't really remember it until I pulled the ticket stub from the rim of the mirror.
The mind works strangely, and today it's causing me to ramble on about weird sports and philosophical packing and I don't really have any point at all, except to say I haven't gotten enough sleep lately and so my head's a little groggy, my arm hurts from lifting so many darned books, and I don't have a whole lot of confidence that I am going to be completely packed by this Saturday.
Calgon, take me away.