I'm heading out the door to a cabin in Alabama to spend the weekend with some artist friends. We're going to celebrate Christmas/solstice, dance around a bonfire, do dream work. Or that's my plan, and in getting ready, I dug into a box I had taped up since 2004, since before I began hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Opening it up was like finding a time machine, instantaneous transportation into my past. I found photo albums from France, from the epic trip my sister and I took around Central America, from our bicycle trips up the east coast. I found clothes I didn't even remember I had, things that are so ratty and old I can't believe I packed them away. I found books I thought I had lost.
Most amazing, I found journal after journal, the record of my life in Chicago, the record of a girl I thought was gone forever. I can't wait to dig into them, and yet a part of me wants to savor every minute of rediscovering my past. These are things things I thought were gone forever. It's a good reminder to me to let go of things, and then when they're given back to accept them as a gift.
Now I'm going to go dive into my dreams. Into my subconscious. Mine what I can from that lode. More than anything, it's a reminder to me that I'm never sorry that I've written things down. Ever. Even if they're destroyed. It's my futile fight against entropy, against perpetual time that wears down all things. But some feeble scraps make it through. These words, for instance. They may be lost, they may survive. But with each word I make my stand against time.
No comments:
Post a Comment