Grieving and tossing shit out keep each other good company. In this house, saturated as it is with sorrow, I’ve been surprised at how casual decluttering has become — like it’s a matter of showing up and puttering, going away for a while, returning, and chipping away some more. Order begins to show.
Sorting like this normally requires a ruthless resolve. Not long ago the stakes would have felt higher. There’d have been resistance to overcome. Now, as I’ve recently mentioned, most stuff doesn’t feel important. How could most objects possibly matter right now, truly?
And so. I cleared a small studio bookcase and a bin jam-packed with paper and notebooks.
First, I consolidated all the tags from my craft show days. For some reason, I’d stored them in three separate places. Tags listing an old website or email, I recycled. The rest now reside in a couple of boxes under my ironing cart — tidy and out of the way.
I threw out a couple of old sketchbooks. Do I hear you gasp? One was filled with kid drawings of the wild and barely-able-to-hold-a-marker phase. Lots of stickers. More critically, they weren’t signed. Not knowing who authored them made them easy to let go.
A sketchbook of my sister’s that had one drawing in it? Out. I have a lot of her artwork elsewhere. For some reason, I had saved a sizable folder filled with her teaching xeroxes for a gravestone rubbing project. I kept a few pages for collage and recycled the rest.
I ripped out page after page from some of my old craft idea notebooks. Instructions from a gel-printing class. Rudimentary cat drawings for felt toys. Very basic sketches of patchwork ideas.
Came upon a quote from The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell, a series I was obsessed with in college. It was weird to find now because just a few days ago I mentioned the books to Ken and how I ought to re-read them.
In other news, we went to the Farmers Market again yesterday (yeah!) where I picked up fresh corn and a beautiful head of purple cauliflower. For another veggie side, I blistered some shishito peppers and drizzled them with honey. Ken grilled chicken breasts with BBQ sauce. They were tender and tasty. We ate in front of another episode of Foyle’s War.
Today’s an unscheduled day. Days without any plans unnerve me a little right now — another symptom of grieving, I think.
Maybe I’ll type up some of the scenes I’ve written recently (or even not so recently). It’d be nice to be able to find them two weeks or two months from now. It’d be REALLY REALLY nice to be working on something. Lately, I can’t seem to settle.
