On Boxes

I'm sitting amidst boxes, and newspaper, and books. Mostly, I'm sitting amidst a lot of stuff piled up around me that I have yet to determine the sentimental value of, in terms of what I will keep and what I will not. I've been here before. I guess each time it feels the same, yet also different. It's so weird to pick up something and hold it in my hand and decide once again to keep it. A whole series of little moments like that will determine what stuff I will still have when I'm ninety and wrinkled and living in some old house somewhere, if I make it that far. And it's a whole series of little moments like that which will determine what memories I will retain, to some extent; since so many memories are triggered by a glance at a letter, or a sideways look at an old knick-knack, or a book, or a photograph. I would like to get rid of all of this, but only if it means placing it in the hand of a dear friend and closing their hand over it and putting my hand on theirs to make sure that they have it firmly clasped in their own. I can't do that, as friends are not storage spaces and they should not be treated as such. Instead, I will send a lot of this stuff out into the ether. It's weird how many things we manage acquire and then shed during our lives, and it's weird how much of it will still exist after we die. Unlike other animals, we don't manage to shed a big chunk of our skin in one long sheath, but we manage to make the things and people around us our protective layer, and we shed some of it as we go, but hold onto what matters. The older I get, the more I realize that the things that matter the most are few, but worth holding on to; and I realize that I only need so very few things to carry on.

We do so much in our lives to try to make ourselves live longer and to try to remind others of ourselves after we're gone, yet some little piece of wood that does nothing and says nothing manages to outlive us every time. Maybe that's why we cut down trees: We have an innate inability to bear the simple fact that these beautiful entities are going to keep living and growing longer than we can or will, unless we do something about it. This thought makes me sad; and yet it reminds me that I can't wait to be living in the trees again. It's comforting to be surrounded by things that have been around since before I was born and are going to still be around even after I am gone. If there's anything heartbreaking about moving, it's the thought that I might not be able to show people that I care as well as I would like to when I am not around to see them and let them know; but that's where trust comes in. No one wants to hear me tell them all the time that I'm glad they exists, and one of my faults it that I have a gross habit of doing this. People want, I think, to just have it be understood that their presence is meaningful in another person's life. I think I only say it so much because the more I care, the more I fear. Perhaps growing older is about learning to detach oneself not only from what matters the least, but more importantly from what matters the most. Strangely enough, it seems sometimes that the most guaranteed way of holding on to something is also the most intangible. A loose grip is a strong grip, especially when it comes to people. It will be nice to have a lot of space around me in which to loosely hold onto things and in which to learn how to hold on to very little. There's a lot of fullness in that empty space, and a lot of this fullness seems to be comprised of thoughts and dreams and songs and love and art.

Sitting amidst boxes, strangely enough, it is my future that flashes before my eyes more than my past. I've had moves in which the memories flooded over me and overwhelmed me to tears, but this time there's a feeling of acceptance that rushes over me. None of what awaits me beyond this point is yet determined, and somehow this is comforting where it should be terrifying. There's a point where it means being more at peace with oneself to just toss the dice. I feel more comfortable in my own skin when I let myself exist outside of what I know and what I love, in a place where I know very little and can expect nothing. I trust the people in my life enough to know that although I may see them rarely, I will still see them. Some may slip through the cracks, but they'll still manage to have changed my life forever, dramatically or subtly.

I don't know where I will land, but eventually I will land somewhere, and it will be home.

On Packing

Each of these objects that I pack into boxes is not an object at all, but a thousand tiny little memories wrapped up together; some of them bigger than others. Some of the smallest objects have the most memories associated with them. Some of the largest have very few. All of these things, all this crap; it's just stuff. It's stuff that I love, but it's still just stuff. It's the people in my life, not this stuff, that I really wish I put into boxes and take with me. But I hate to see the people that I love stuffed into boxes.

One of the hardest things to throw away today was a tiny, plastic, parachuting man that I bought once, using prize-tickets won in a game of skee-ball with a really dear friend. I threw it away because I recognized that it in itself had little significance to me, and I recognized that the memories existed there even in its absence. I'm going to a place where I hardly know anyone. I look forward to feeling small and I look forward to being surrounded by strangers. I look forward to trusting only those who earn my trust and I look forward to spending a lot of time alone. I look forward to filling that space with thoughts and adventures and new things that I might make. I look forward to reading new books and shaking new hands. There are plenty of other piece-of-crap just-object objects for me to fill with memories, and I have plenty of time left in my life in which to do this.

Packing this stuff, this stuff that I suppose I do love, I realize how easy it would be for me to just get rid of it all. The more I pack, the more I realize that none of this constitutes who I am or what my life is. None of it gives me the sense of my life itself. The real grit and the backbone of what matters is totally invisible. It's the memories, and it's the people. When it comes to moving these objects, it could be simple. I could store these items, and wait long enough to forget what I had stored, and then stop paying for the storage unit and let the storage company people just get rid of it all for me. I've heard of people doing that, as a way of being more cutthroat about what they are willing to get rid of. It seems instead to me that they are paying the storage sheds, and paying time itself, to make them forget what it is that they are supposed to not be cutthroat about. I guess this makes sense. I'm not going to do it, and it wouldn't be my style really, anyway; but I could. It's far more plausible that I'd just decide to put everything in a huge dumpster and then walk away from it, with a great sense of loss accompanied by a feeling of victory. The thing is, I can't forget anyone who mattered to me, and no one's going to come along and get rid of them if I try to forget them for a long enough period of time. I don't want anybody to come along and get rid of them. I want to sit on porches with them and drink whiskey and lie in fields, staring at the sun. All of them.

It's strange: I'm bringing with me all the things that I could see myself so easily getting rid of; and I'm leaving behind all the things that, try as I might, I don't think I could ever truly walk away from. Perhaps this is a good exercise in independence; or perhaps it's a realization that I've put myself in storage for too long. Whatever it is, I'm not convinced that what I'm actually throwing away amounts in any way to a little plastic parachuting man, and I'm not convinced that what I'm planning to take with me is really stuff at all. I'm taking with me a million moments and laughs and pangs of sadness and every other emotion I've felt over the years. I'm taking this with me, and it's all at once lighter than air and heavier than lead. Maybe this is what Kundera was talking about, but in the context of a shift in geographical location.

I've got so many amazing people in my life, and I've loved fiercely until it hurt. But this time, I'm going to find myself a home. I'm going to fill my rooms with all the memories that I have, and I'm going to cover the walls with all of your faces, because that's just how it has to be. Maybe I should call off the moving truck and just consider myself smashed under the weight of the things that I hate to leave behind. I'd rather, I suppose, not do this; and just lug the crap that I do own all the way to my new home. I'd rather be smashed in the embrace of an old friend's hug when I finally get to see them again. I'd rather keep everything that matters, because only the things that do not embrace one-another are crap (the books, and the cables, and the kinked wires), and even the crap reminds me of those that do embrace.

To distract myself from the strong sense of missing that I am already anticipating, I think I'll probably learn to find comfort in these objects, even if they are just objects. There's something to be said for a warm quilt that smells of laundry detergent, even if it just reminds me of someplace else. Until I have new friends and until I make new memories, this will do: a warm quilt, and a cup of tea, and my own young old self.

On Being Awake in the Dead of Night

It's been a while since I've written much here, but perhaps it's been a while since I've slept so little. I find it somewhat strange that insomnia is so often associated with distress, anxiety, and the like. I certainly am awful at sleeping - or at least I am awful at sleeping during the normal hours - but it is not always because I am feeling any of these things. I don't pretend to be immune to distress or anxiety, and in fact I can excel at both if I put my mind to it, but insomnia for me is something different. At times, it's felt like rebellion - a strange sort of semi-voluntary nonconformity. At other times, it's been a respite from the noise and chaos of excessive sensory stimulus. At times, it's been the time in which I can do all the things that I wanted to do during the daytime hours, but couldn't find time for: like reading, or drawing, or daydreaming, or drafting designs on the rest of my life and figuring out how best to direct my creative energies. I can't say I've figured it out yet, but I've got another fifty or sixty years to get it right.

There are nights in which I try to sleep, and I toss and turn for hours, but this sort of night is extremely rare. It may happen perhaps once every several months. The more common sort of night for me is the night in which I, finally having a large chunk of silence and space and time to work with, feel that I am free to think, and process, and sort through the things that I am feeling. It's important for me to have this time be alone and think about things and decompress, and it's easiest to do this in the middle of the night when the likelihood of any sort of responsibility interrupting my thoughts, or the likelihood of their being a loud voice in the next room, is slim.

I think it started out when I would stay up just an hour or two past my bedtime as a kid. I'd do all sorts of different things, and always it felt magical, like stolen time that I was using to do things that I had the pleasure of sharing with no one except for nighttime itself. Some nights I'd stay up late reading. My Dad or Mom would put me to bed, and I'd get out a little flashlight and hide under the sheets to read, like in the movies. Other nights, during the short time-period in which we shared a bunk-bed, my brother and I would talk about stuff to one another.

For a while, when I was thirteen or so, I'd try to quietly practice ballet within the small space of my bedroom. My Mom had recently made me quit taking classes, and I had this idea in the back of my mind that maybe if I practiced late into the night, even if it meant sacrificing sleep and being tired in class the next day, I could be a great ballerina. I eventually stopped doing this, because it was hard to do in the dark, and I realized that I was only fooling myself. Maybe I was doing it more for the sake of being obsessed with a craft - something that I feel strongly yet often direct at too many sorts of crafts at once, to the point where it is overwhelming and frustrating - than for the sake of being good at something. I'd really rather just obsess over one craft or art form and manage to pull off being good at it than obsess over every art form and obsess over creative expression in general. There is a point where it hurts to love something like, say, music, if one is forced to face one's own limitations; and these limitations are only increased when you throw in an additional love for drawing, and writing, and theatre, and ballet, or... The list could go on, and I don't want to get too hypothetical here.

Sometimes I'd stay up in my grandparents' house in Berkeley and read all of the old books on their bookshelf. Or I'd stay up at my other grandparents' house in Davis and tiptoe around, spooking myself out by glimpsing my own reflection in a window and then running, barefoot, on the cold brown tiles of the floor. Sometimes my cousin and I would stay up late whispering and giggling and talking about our lives and our families and the stories that we knew and liked. Sometimes we'd sneak out of the bedroom and just tiptoe around the house for the sake of making mischief. We weren't supposed to be up, and yet there we were, wide awake, with the clock above the stove to serve as a reminder of our delinquency. For such good kids, we sure loved to get into trouble, and we'd cry and then laugh about it once we were scolded.

Other nights, I'd open my bedroom window and press my nose against the screen, feeling the night air. I still remember the smell of that air, and the smell of the screen as I pressed my nose up against it. I did a lot of wishing on stars, and praying to Gods just in case they existed, and mouthing little wishes to whoever might listen. I wished a lot about my future, and about my family, and about people I cared about or people I had crushes on. I think I did a lot of crying while smelling that screen and while smelling that night air, too. But as much as I wished my nights away, I also just stared at the sky quite a bit. I looked for constellations, and I tried to sharpen my eyes to an extent that would allow me to see the deer running around in the back yard. Sometimes our cat would perch itself on the wooden railing near my window, and it would reach its nose far enough so that I could see its face through the screen. Sometimes I thought about removing the screen entirely and escaping from my room by climbing onto that railing, thirty feet or so off the ground; but when it came down to it, I had nothing really to escape from, and didn't know yet what I wanted to escape to.

At my Mom's house, it was different. I would stay up reading or writing or drawing, but I'd also often stay up playing my guitar, or listening to CD's in my discman. I had a copy of Sgt. Pepper's that I would listen to a lot. I had a copy of Peter and the Wolf that got some listening.

The best thing to do, though, was to open the door from my room to the front porch really softly, and leave my room. I'd step lightly on the front porch, and lightly in the front yard, and I'd open the gate softly so as not to let it squeak, and I'd be free. I spent a lot of time just walking around the old neighborhoods. Sometimes I'd go to the park and just sit in the middle of a field, or on the steps of the bleachers there. Sometimes I'd go to my old elementary school and look into the dark windows of the old classrooms. Sometimes I'd walk for hours and just keep walking because I felt I had a lot to sort through in my head. I didn't really sneak out for the purpose of meeting up with friends, although to this day I still like the feel of that notion, but mainly just for the purpose of seeing what it felt like to be out there in the night on my own terms, with my own thoughts. Sometimes I'd run into people while walking around - usually folks a bit older than me that I knew from the music scene back home - but usually I'd walk alone; and usually I'd walk for a long time.

I guess eventually this time of solitude had to be pushed back even further into the hours of the night, once I went to college and started living with other folks who stayed up late. Sometimes finding those hours of time to myself would mean waiting until three, or four, or five in the morning. After a while I think it just became habit.

I supposed the notion of insomnia being a vessel for anxiety hits home to some extent, in that I tend to do a lot of thinking during those wee hours of the night, but I still spot something of a misconception here, at least in terms of how I relate to the concept. The thoughts that I have are rarely thoughts of stress or anger or sadness. I get most of that kind of thinking done earlier in the day, if at all. Rather, I tend to find myself just remarking on the awe that I feel in response to life itself and in response to the world around me. I find myself dwelling in a sort of state of wonder. It's this state of wonder that keeps me reaching out to people, and letting myself open up my heart, and reminding myself to make art and music, and knowing why I live the kind of life that I live and do the things that I do. This sense of wonder can be found everywhere, and certainly not just in that space that exists in the silent middle of the night, but it's so immediate in that late, late hour, that I've grown fond of being acquainted with it in that way.

There's a comfort in the silence of the night, because it's a silence I know well. It's strange that different kinds of silence can feel so different. I think my favorite sort of silence is the kind that can be found by way of riding my bike way out into the country, stopping roadside, and walking into the middle of some orchard to just sit there amongst the little saplings or tomato plants or the tall grasses. It's a silence that seems to go well with the smell of grasses in the warm summer air. It's a silence that is rarely broken in a way that is abrasive, and more often broken in a way that indicates signs of life, sans the chaos of life. The buzzing of a fly, for instance, may break the silence, and although the fly has a more abrasive kind of sound to it, it still seems to be a sound that belongs.

Hours awake in the middle of the night never seem to bring about any confusion or unrest, despite the fact that what I experience during those hours is a very literal kind of unrest. Instead, I find myself coming to comforting kinds of conclusions. I find myself reminding myself why it is that I love what I love, and knowing - knowing that it is worth it, no matter how painful. I find myself remembering why I take risks in my interactions with people and why I remain open to people despite my own fears. I find myself reestablishing my love of music and art and writing if I need to, and if ever I find myself doubting whether I am wasting my time, within a few hours alone, wrapped in my own ponderings, I will manage to assure myself that I do these things because I must, and because that is who I am. Mostly, I find myself feeling great amounts of care - not care directed at anyone or anything in particular, but care still in the inlets of my heart, waiting to be applied toward some project or song or something. I find myself noting the great amounts of love that I have for the things in my life, and trying to find the best way to show this. I find myself thinking that maybe love is really all that I need, and the fact that I still find myself thinking this despite the number of times that i have been hurt only makes me believe it more. I find myself thinking about art and music and writing as extensions of this feeling, and feeling grateful that the source of these things is seemingly infinite and in no way confined within myself but existing in the people that I know and the songs that I listen to again and again.

The hours I spend awake at night are mostly spent thinking about why I am glad that I get to spend hours awake during the day. Sometimes I wish there were more of both - the daytime hours, and the nighttime hours.

Maybe it'll shorten my life, or render me too sleepy or sound-sensitive or introverted or ponderous; but fuck it. There is a clarity of thought that I find there, in the middle of the night, that I crave; and that I store for later use, lest I need it during the light of day.