I never feel comfortable in a living or working environment until I have personalized it with my own memorabilia - things that say "I am here, and this is who I am". But several years ago I found myself in a situation where I lost a large part of myself and one of my closest friends at the same time. When I began to reflect on my life, I began to realize that I didn't even recognize the woman who was displayed on the walls of my apartment and my cubicle. This was my response to that epiphany.
Memoirs Of A Pack-rat |
| by Tina K |
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someday all that will be left of me will be my paraphernalia; perhaps that is why I invest so much in displaying my innards wherever possible: scattering them on the walls, neatly lining them on a shelf; will it be enough? I've never wasted time being concerned about what the moment may bring - my attention is always too focused on how the moment will be remembered. what of experience so long as there is proof that the experience has been had? photos, letters, knick-knacks, things - proof I was here. the day will come - perhaps too soon - when the world will come in to look at the walls and in the drawers and on the shelves; to examine all of the pictures, posters, papers and poems. yes, she was here. she went to a movie a bar a dance an amusement park. she loved many people she lost many men she cried many nights and had many friends. and the bottles will sit on the shelf a silent testament to her pathetic desperate struggle to save, to capture, the one thing she could never have. time. her life will sit in bottles: on shelves, on speakers, in boxes the wax she used to trap the time holding in the screams begging for freedom; her own life that she imprisoned because she was so afraid of losing it. whispers of dreams filling the cracks between candies and shells and stones because none of the men ever could set them free. that is all she shall leave for the world, bottles instead of beauty a bracelet instead of babies. for all her efforts to leave something behind faded to nothing more than etchings on a golden trinket dangling about her wrist. never knowing, never knowing, as she slowly faded away, what she took with her. someday all that will be left of me will be my paraphernalia maybe that’s all there ever was. |