My life as a circus as represented in small-object form.

I have spent the better part of the week reclaiming parts of my apartment that have become jungle-like and unmanageable. One room in particular has been (and continues to be) populated by a species of paper that seems to multiply and defy classification.
I frequently think that if I could just create an appropriate taxonomy of what goes where and of how sacred each item should be that I would more quickly be able to sort my way through the highly flammable mess. But part of the reason this mess is here, is because I stare at different items and am at a loss to determine if, or how much, or for what I need any of them. Partially because I lack the context I normally have when I'm actively going out and living my life (Ah yes! This is for that article I'm writing!), and partly because my solitude makes me a little compulsively Franciscan about possessions. I probably don't need any of this stuff anyway, right?

So, I am sitting in a room with half a dozen Xerox boxes from my Madison office. They are filled with papers thrown together mere days after depositing my dissertation. I wish I could tell you that meant these boxes contained only office papers, but because I was in-between housing several times in grad school and moved with the regularity of a nomad, actually there is some pretty random stuff that accumulated.

Did someone give me a rubber stamp with a penguin on it at some point? Because I apparently saw fit to keep it. Along with a master lock I lack the key to (or maybe I just haven't found that yet?), cello rosin, (notably for orchestra AND solo work), transnational assorted and sundry change, and carpal tunnel handouts from my physical therapist. Never mind the years of tax paperwork, the hundreds of articles that may or may not be relevant to my research, or the teaching materials I'm pretty sure I'm going to need in about a year, but have no purpose for at the moment. What does one DO with old checkbooks once they are filled? Do they make monster shredders for that? Why are the only framed photos I have all from five or ten years ago? And why does the idea of changing the pictures in them seem so daunting? How many Microsoft Office CDs are in here? And why am I certain none of them would do me any good if my computer crashed?

This is my life as a circus as represented in small-object form.

Perhaps I should create an installation.

So, a large part of my week has involved slowing picking through this unintelligible menagerie of items that might as well belong to someone else for all of my ability to determine what they're even doing here. It is not that I am afraid to let things go. Every full garbage and recycling bag I carry out brings a sigh of relief. If I'd had more than three days before I moved here, I would have done this all then.

And yet, I do feel the need to inspect what it is I am disturbing in this strange habitat. I am clearly not making a choice to immediately dump everything in the trash... though I'm pretty sure in the short run that would be easier, and in the long run probably affect very little. If I've made it this long without sorting these things, how important can they be?

Part of this is about returning my home office to a state that brings me peace and comfort. But a lot more of it is about revisiting the last ten or so years of my life, as represented in the not-very-methodically-selected texts I have retained. I have this sense that there are truths about myself and my life hidden here in plain sight that I have somehow lacked the perspective to evaluate before today. And ordering these objects will not just clear my desk, but my mind.

It is a textual archaeology of my life, and the sociologist in me is inspecting it with the remove of a woman who has become something of a recluse and can't really identify with much before her. But it is in some small way like getting to know myself all over again.

80's Night at Cat's Cradle circa 2006

Why is it so hard to let that folder from Random House go? Do I miss my old life there? And literally half of my photos from college are me and Nora doing crazy fun things that we obviously should stop being so old and do all over again. (How did I forget about so much of that?)

A few of my friends have expressed worry that I have become so solitary. It is a far cry from who I have been at other points in my life to be sure, but I don't think it is so very different from living in the woods. I just have running water now, and a boyfriend who visits on the weekends. But otherwise, things are mostly the same. My living room has my meditation cushions. My bedroom has my bed. Bandit keeps me company. And in small ways, I move towards something a little bit more like my old life. With each piece of paper I inspect and categorize, I am slowly re-ordering my sense of my self. The fact that retainer rubber bands are at the bottom of one of the boxes is funny to me, and reminds me that no matter how different now feels from before, there is continuity in my life. Middle school me is present somewhere in this room.

And that is probably what I am trying to feel again. Less of a before and an after, and more of a complete storyline. The order of a complete storyline. The control of seeing the big picture again. A sense that I am whole throughout and across all of this time.

Whether I will find that among un-punched coffee cards and insurance documents remains to be seen... but either way, I am certain my load will be lighter. Everything extraneous that I release from my life and my home creates space for something greater to form. But I'm in no rush. The place I'm in now, while it is small and while it is mostly solitary is not empty and is not lonely. There is simply a shift happening on my outsides which reflects the shift of my insides (or vice versa).

Because that is the entire purpose of 2013, to let that which is authentic grow and stay in our lives, and that which is not fall away... whether in our hearts, in our minds, or among a stack of Xerox boxes from Wisconsin.

Namaste.