No Way To Slow Down

Dom: What are you doing?
Tata: I'm going to open one of those dusty boxes.
Dom: You always say that.
Tata: This time I'm going to do it! I'm inspired!
Dom: Open a bottle of wine first. There's gotta be something in that box you can use as a funnel.
Tata: What, so when I find Morgan's handwriting I pour the whole bottle down my throat at once and forget to set fire to my papers?
Dom: I hear wine's not very flammable. You're never going to see your living room floor unless you get tanked on pinot grigio and decongestant and open the fucking box!
Tata: I'm going to do it!
Dom: What's to stop me from getting in my truck and coming to help you?
Tata; You hate winter and your truck hates driving. See you Friday, dahhhhhlink!

Dom's right, and I have a sippy cup full of white wine. In the box, I found folders full of 1997, as if my life stopped when I moved back into a house we all called the Heartbreak Hotel because to move in, you had to have a bad breakup of Biblical proportions. Everyone knew I had the credentials. Here they are, alphabetized, date stamped, carefully sorted. The most intense period of my life came to a screeching halt when I put files, folders and the metal rack into boxes and sealed them with stylish purple duct tape.

A good portion of the box I picked is folders labeled with names I don't recognize. I used to attend and hold writing workshops, and writers of all skill levels asked me to critique their work along the way because I see into the words. In daily life, this is not an asset. Try reading a computer manual when you feel through the words the writer knows her boyfriend is leaving her for the boy at the copy shop. I drop these folders into plastic grocery bags for the trash.

There's a photograph reader Mark Wintle gave me once of a copper sea and a copper yacht under a copper sun and blessed by a copper sky. Postcards from people I know and people I don't remember and a box of Picasso bath salts puzzle me; CMJ CDs, posters from poetry readings, handbills from events I remember and don't, stationery I still like tickle me. I stuff the bags with extra stuff I'll never recall and never miss. Then I fold up the cardboard box.

It's done. Hey, it's done! So I opened the second box. It started all over with folders of my own work I barely recognized, old event photos, publicity photos I laughed about now. People took pictures of me because they had crazy ideas of what I was. What did I think I was doing? What was I doing?

Two boxes are empty and folded in a doorway. I'm relieved but relief is tempered by the pile of papers, photos and artwork drafts I can't bear to look at; principly: the piece I was working on in 1997 when details of my life fell out of my brain like so many teardrops - there were so many tears. Winnie the Good Witch told me recently when she turned cards for me in 1996 after Morgan moved out, the cards were so bad she shuffled the deck and changed the subject. I wish it sounded familiar.

At issue: does the weight of what I was and did carry me forward or drag me to the bottom? Can I draw a mustache on that self-serious self-portrait or can I toss all that crap and design a new me? I started Poor Impulse Control to conjure a new life, but no spell will take hold until I take out the trash. My past proves the future doesn't wait. The new life I wanted arrives every day, whether or not I'm ready for it. I'm elated. I feel light. I still don't know what to do with myself.

Just a few more boxes to go.