Letters. VHS tapes, records, books and cassettes, zine's - ones I made and hundreds more others made, decal logos from cars that burned to the ground or were abandoned in a lot, keys from who knows where. Cheese stickers, wall posters and hangy things, slogans and buttons (you know, pins!) that go on your punk rock jacket. Middle school notebooks, journals and more journals, spirals books full of poetry and prose, collage papers big enough to have been folded dozens of times. My Dads letterman jacket from college, so many obscure pieces of debris neatly organized. I could tell that there was a method by the way the piles were organized in the boxes but I couldn't read it and had no idea what I was trying to tell me. pictures and sayings and references some badly burned from a fire that someone once set.
The stories are that it was some other person who somehow did me wrong, the stories are from my Mom, the stories are suspiciously light in details and although I have no strict recollection I'm positive I set fire to my stuff sometime in the late nineties. Sometime during a month long drive from San Francisco to Chicago in the fall of '97, a pickup bed straining under dozens of cardboard cubes, many hurled into dumpsters at truck stops along I-80 while trying to fight my way over the Rockies.
I drove 36 hours and then pulled over somewhere in the Dakotas and drove a distance off the freeway and sobbed until I passed out.
All of the items were made and used and left in a barn for 15 years, since before widespread cell phones and internet. Since before Google and Facebook. I'm stuck now because I have had some very scary and powerful experiences with items that do bring back some intense feelings and emotions, like a deja vu thing but add in the stress dream about being naked in a crowd of friends. Sudden strong reflections I haven't had in many years. I'd like to think i have a personality disorder or some kind of specialized amnesiatic trauma but the reality is that I just lost it I think. I've had a few sweeping off my feet moments remembering people and places from when I had an easier time finding hope, granting myself an optimistic outlook. Less frenetic and more open to possibilities.
I drove 36 hours and then pulled over somewhere in the Dakotas and drove a distance off the freeway and sobbed until I passed out.
All of the items were made and used and left in a barn for 15 years, since before widespread cell phones and internet. Since before Google and Facebook. I'm stuck now because I have had some very scary and powerful experiences with items that do bring back some intense feelings and emotions, like a deja vu thing but add in the stress dream about being naked in a crowd of friends. Sudden strong reflections I haven't had in many years. I'd like to think i have a personality disorder or some kind of specialized amnesiatic trauma but the reality is that I just lost it I think. I've had a few sweeping off my feet moments remembering people and places from when I had an easier time finding hope, granting myself an optimistic outlook. Less frenetic and more open to possibilities.
I left San Francisco in 1997 just after thanksgiving. I packed up 9 boxes of everything I was and drove to Canada and left them there.
Moving to Chicago in December and embarking on a year of loss and benefit, I moved back to San Francisco in 1999.
15 years later I drove to Denver with my 13 year old son and dog to retrieve them all and search the contents.
We all bonded and became comfortable in the deep love we felt for each other.
After I got back to SF I opened each box, mowing through the contents and sorting between trash, keep and unknown.
On the 3rd box I laughed so hard I almost wet myself, by the 7th box I was crying.