Saturday, September 7, 2013

I CAME 2000 MILES

I came a long way for memories. I don't regret any of it but it wasn't necessary. For a long time I thought like the young bride in the movie, A QUIET MAN who wanted to be surrounded by her stuff. It was the things that gave memory a place. But that isn't so. Memory is resident in us all. The journals I put up yestereve are distilled memories but I can remember all of that with just closing my eyes and thinking back. I did that tonight as I talked to a lovely South African lady and her husband and then to a marine turned navy officer at Shakespeare's.

No mistake, I'll leave here with the books I wrote and I treasure the letters an ancestor wrote home more than a century ago but all the rest is debris. I didn't miss it for years and won't miss it forever.

4 comments:

Buck said...

It sounds very much like this is a "sentimental journey" in progress. I won't pretend to understand what you're doing and/or going through, but I will say I've done a bit of divesting in my life. It can be both liberating and traumatic, at the same time. The trauma recedes but the liberation bits stay... was my experience.

Bonne chance, Curt.

Anne Bonney said...

What you describe is an important lesson, I think. I'm going to clean out some more closets now.

HMS Defiant said...

Finished today at 1428. Sum total of remaining is my golf clubs, a tiny silver cup presented to my parents by the 22nd Field Artillery shortly after my arrival in the world and a 22" box filled with clothes and my Persian carpets.

Letting go. It feels really good.

HMS Defiant said...

Thank you. The only thing I took out of Virginia was my beachball beach blanket. We need that for proper star gazing. I left the sword because I already have a couple in MetroParkCentralis...oh and flying with a sword sucks. The TSA demands that you unload it first. Losers.