It was a chore, it was. Boxing all those doodads, scrubbing all those soap marks off the corner tile in the bathtub, sifting through six-and-a-half years of a life that I no longer recognized, all to move into an unknown city, with a long-lost friend, and mope and pace somewhere that didn't make me nauseous. I packed boxes full of papers, boxes full of toys, boxes full of trinkets, boxes full of trash sometimes, just to box them, to organize what was important to me, and what was in due time going to be in the possession of the noble panhandler armada on the sidewalk outside my storied Tower loft. I packed boxes of things I knew I would throw away. I supposed they needed a good send-off. They were precious to me at some point, and I was convinced at some point that they'd be precious to me again; that they'd tell my story to whomever came upon them so I wouldn't have to. So I could remain the stoic figure I feel like on the inside but don't resemble in the mirror. The tin Eiffel Tower key chain might have orated loftily of my time spent in gay Paris, though I'd never actually been there. It was kept to remind me that someone I cared about had been there, and had cared about me enough to dish me a novelty nod so I would remember that they cared about me somewhere else other than right in front of me. The black iron lamp with loop-de-loop ambient sheen and the crooked shade, which Robin's aunt Lynn had given her by default when she succumbed to cancer too young and then I threw away, might have expounded on my antiquated tastes in practical illumination, at least in a relative sense.And that record collection. By God, those twirling black grooves would have proven, absolutely and finally, the merit with which I opine upon the world of music so routinely and profoundly. If only I hadn't had to sell them all, so that they were still sitting in neat rows on my wicker shelf that I threw out, whispering the cosmic coo to lookyloo voyeur art Nazis that even though they disagreed with my assessments on the wildly influential derivatives of Mark Arm to a new generation of fuzzed-out retro hippies, I was probably right. The proof was right in front of them. Who would they be to argue with their paltry stacks of CDs and an iPod full of illegally downloaded pander-punk and neo-gospel soul? They would be, well, the people who would know the story of my life without me having to tell it to them. And I might miss that most of all.
Owning a lot of things doesn't make you richer or greater or more sentimental or more worldly or more insane or even happier; it just makes you weighted. It just means you fill your space with things that might serve a function to you that you'll never use for that express function, that you keep bottle caps and newspapers and birthday cards and 10 cent jewelry to help you remember things that you don't really care to remember, that you're ignoring breaking under the weight of a bunch of detritus that you don't realize yet is stifling you from learning about the future instead of making you worry about remembering the past. If life is about what you have, and what you have is a lexicon of largely unimportant knickknacks and hand-me-down couches and chairs and a bed that your friend sold you for $25 and posters and dishes that you only use a few of but keep just in case people come over, it seems an empty life. To fill it, you have to go, go, go. Outside, upward, downward, sideways, fly. What you need is inside you; it's always been there, and you can add and subtract to that treasure of you as often or as little as you like. And you don't have to pack any boxes to do it.
And my friends, my family and my former lovers; lest I forget them. They've been stacked almost as densely as all those records. They don't get thrown out or donated or sold. They become foundations. They hold true the walls, rafters, ceiling, floor, stucco, windows, doors of me. But they aren't there anymore. Not the way they used to be. Not in the flesh at my call. Not here to distract me from the absence of my possessions. But they're inside too, and they kick and throw fits and pester and nag and elate and comfort me still, like the memories of my grandmother at home next to her stereo that she gave me and I threw away. Like the way I can taste food I love but can't afford before it hits my tongue. Like the way Japanese Maples remind me of 7th Avenue fall in Chico, or how the scent of bad coffee I can afford reminds me of my dad. Like the way the first few notes of Saves the Day's "Rocks Tonic Juice Magic," from their album that I sold, whisks me away to when I was 19 years old, to older friends I don't even talk to or want to talk to anymore, to ex-girlfriends who've long since moved on, to the baby steps of living on my own for the first time. Like how seeing gallon jugs of water flashes me back to dropping acid in the field behind Kent's Market by the Redding Airport, and how easily I had crushed the jug to pop the top off with my super-human drug-addled synapses and then was convinced I had been the cause for JFK Jr.'s watery death the following morning, even though he was all the way across the country and stone-cold sober.
These things don't go away, and they never will. Those sensory attributions may seem base, and mostly they are; but they're mine. And they're all I need. It's the little memories, not the little gadgets and medals that make me who I am and provide me with even the smallest semblances of worth. So, it is with pride that I've found myself on another Main Street, this one in the wind-swept Northwest metropolis of Portland, OR, 500 miles away from my old Main Street in the sun-scorched valley din of Chico, CA. I am lighter now, in more ways than one, enlightened. I've got an empty room to prove it.
