notes from underfoot

You know how it is when you are moving... all the sifting through objects, creating piles of varying degrees of importance and chaos, the cutting away of the extraneous. I'm feeling the urge to purge. Moving is a pain in the butt, yet so liberating. Already I'm envisioning the next round on the other end, finding more to recycle as I unpack and organize.

As usually happens, I have also come across old letters, notes to myself, weird scraps with fragmented thoughts whose contexts have been long lost. I've decided to post some of them here, to indulge my absurd impulse to preserve some of this nonsense, while still satisfying my overwhelming need to get rid of most everything.

"I don't jump into puddles anymore and there's no one that I'd like to splash with. Most people don't appreciate it. We threw leaves at each other in the park. That was almost similar."

"Tradescantia. Zebrina. Purpusii."

This fragment came on two pieces of torn paper that had obviously, at one time, belonged to several other pieces which have disappeared since the shredding. On one piece, only the end of two words were available (...hed ...ars.) but on the other, practically a poem:

"...dark window; on
your namelessness on her tongue and the s...

...still in her hand, while the birds sang softly
in the damp green of the trees."

Actually, now that I think of it, that may have been a draft of a poem. I wonder which one it was??

"I have acquired more bruises in the last week than I can remember having in a long time. My collarbone, purple with the weight of your forearm against me. Pink and yellow fingertips dot my thighs, the backs of my upper arms. The impression of your teeth finally fading from my shoulder, and the sand dollar-sized misfortune on my calf, which I don't recall doing anything to induce. I have been happier than I remember being as well."

"The key is elasticity. That's why humans are great."

"...the days I feel like all I am are the roles I play and I hold my hands up before my face and realize I am becoming transparent."

"...why we allow ourselves to be ruled by things that tick and silly painted lines."

"Don't eat that morning. No liquid after 10:20."

I also found a card from my friend Jeff that died this past January and it had me in tears for a full ten minutes...

And, of course, I've also been rifling through assorted class notes on Foucault, Lacan, Eliot's Prufrock, and pictures, cards, grocery lists, receipts, half-filled notebooks, numerous recipes, books and film suggestions, documents, letters of recommendation and rejection, strange foreign coins, and a single Costa Rican pejavilla (?) or palm kernel.

I'll leave you with this scrap I unearthed with this quote from Albert Camus: "In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer."