Shad

It’s really odd the things that a person
moves from apartment to apartment to house.
Soap, for instance, has somehow made it
into my select list of “keepers”. One a bar, a
gift, from the parents of a friend from their trip
to greece of all places. It’s olive oil based.
There you go. Also, there is soap
from Palistine. I have not been
there, but came to own
soap from there
at some point.

But other things that continue to blow my mind.
I have managed to keep the box that my phone
came in 3 years ago… with the extended service
paperwork (expired a year ago).

A box of old CD cases. I’d like to throw them out,
but I just can’t for some reason. They’re somehow
part of the things that I move over and over again.

And what about the Nintendo… never played anymore
and yet… it can’t be ignored that Super Mario Bros. 3 is
infact the best side scrolling game ever invented. What if
I were to want to play it one day? What then smarty smart? huh?

Why do we keep these things? I’m sure you have them. Admit it,
right in the back of your closet, you have a box of utterly useless crap that
you keep not because you want it, but because you can’t bring yourself to throw it out.

In some small way, I view these items as memories. There is some small part of my brain
set aside for each of those items. Remembering where they came from and who was there.

As I write this, I get some simple advice from Willie Nelson…

What do you do with a memory
that just hangs around and stares at me.
I can tear that frame down off the wall
but it won’t erase the things I saw.

I think Willie is telling me to clean house.