minstrel

On moving:

I've donated two carloads of stuff, started reading Unclutterer and Zen Habits, and significantly pared down my excess furniture, clothes, kitchenware and uncategorizable things that made me feel suffocated in my previous space. I'm not, by any means, done.

Getting rid of stuff is addictive. I don't miss anything. I should add "yet" to that statement, but I'm pretty sure that no circumstances will arise in which a set of unused martini glasses passed to me two years ago by a neighbor will become necessity. The glasses are gone- along with piles of other crap that I've already forgotten in the last few weeks.

I'm intrigued by those who horde minutiae because I think I share that tendency-- especially when an object is linked to my memories. I am sentimental. I'm probably not alone in this, but I confuse the object for the memory and try to archive the latter by holding on to the item-- whatever it is. I'm working on a solution which will satisfy both my desire for less stuff and my need to memorialize experiences.

Papers are the worst. I still have three boxes of paperwork that I'd like to shrink down to just one small hanging file crate. That still leaves boxes of notebooks and sketch pads containing scads of drawings and embarrassing musings. In my archiving crate, I found some poems that I wrote about people in my poetry workshop in the spring of 2002. I wrote them about almost everyone in the class, but I could only find a few. They were just notes on the margins of papers. I have typed them here, unedited:

(Katy)
is beautiful like a marble
with two sharp
syllables

I like when you get excited
about something
like a word
and you squint your eyes
until they are little eyelash
halfmoons
and you would say it like that
"moooons" while you smile
and gesture,
narrow arms with sleeve
pulled up above the elbow

I don't remember who the following one was about...

smile, reaching one side of your mouth before the other as though you couldn't fully
commit to it
one arm gripping the other while you squeeze your fingers closed around your pen
or air

nor this one..

To my afternoon contortionist,
I'm not sure what you are
or what you are becoming
but you would fit in my car
and we could sit together at movies
You, tucked half in your seat,
half in mine

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While trying to minimize my toiletries, I disposed of all of my shampoo bottles. I traded them in for a Lush bar shampoo which I love as a concept (no packaging waste, low maintenance) but my skin hated (I have yet to prove the bar is the cause). My googling results for shampoo reviews were disappointing at best. So, instead of hunting for the perfect product, I bought a shampoo for the elegant packaging.

This is similar to my previous practice of buying the brand whose commercials had the most attractive models (to support good casting) or toothpaste with the shiniest box and over-the-top descriptions. That is how everyone makes decisions in the grocery store health and beauty aisle, right?

i own the city

My Embrace is Eternal Mix: