artefacts of myself, or bar napkins

moving back into my parent's house in the middle of my college career one summer in 2002 wasn't too difficult. i had tried, struggled, and failed for two years to make an adult life for myself, moving between st. louis and chicago more times than i'd like to admit, and i was ready for a break. i had just turned twenty and settled in to complete the last two years of college. however, i couldn't resume the life i left at eighteen.

the problem: my bedroom. i had occupied it since i was twelve. the small room at the back of the house, permanently lit by a light post in the neighboring back yard, where i had spent five years transforming from a strange and shy child into an even stranger, defiant teenager, was a crypt of those years; during the two years of my absence from that childhood address on Lakehurst Street a thick layer of dust had settled on half-finished scrapbooks, Beatles CDs and posters, reports written in 10th grade, photographs printed and obsessed over in 12th grade, seashells brought from my former North Carolina home, and all the et ceteras produced from those years. i could never manage to discard any of those items save for those two or three moments of insanity where i spent a day or two going through my closet and drawers reminiscing over those things i made myself throw away. the pink curtains and sea-shell themed desk i reluctantly accepted from my mother at a younger and less confident age remained. journals abandoned after ten pages remained. the 3x5 notecard box in which i hid cigarette butts remained.

i returned to my parents' home at twenty, made a feeble attempt at reconstituting the room for myself and resigned to sleep for the next two years on the couch in the basement (which subsequently became a site of turf wars between my high-school-aged brother and i). i trumped my mother's talent for procrastination, and despite all our good intentions nothing was ever done; i could never bear (and never had the time) to file through all the stuff of my former life to choose what was worth keeping. when i moved away for graduate school my mother eventually hired a friend to tackle the room. it was strange to return on christmas vacation one year to find all of my stuff (my life, at one time) relegated to large blue tupperware tubs, and labeled jars, such as one, filled with coins and a two dollar bill labeled "her life savings?"

that which i had saved in my life thus far was taken care of ... to make way for a guest room. i am usually the guest staying in that room two or three times per year.

are my pack-rat days over? my obsession with preserving the artifacts of my past lives, picking and choosing what might some day elicit far-gone memories of my former selves comes into conflict with the space i presently wish to occupy. i learned, the year i moved to hyde park for graduate school, that i couldn't simply cart all those treatises on existentialism, those unread novels and books of poetry around with me the rest of my life. those books remained on a shelf in my small oddly-shaped room unread as the books purchased by the command of the syllabus and of my thesis research piled up on the floor, displaced by my desire to remain with past desires to know jean-paul sartre, t.s. eliot, and simone du beauvior.

i've learned that those acts of creation, those collections, those ephemera that result from my experiences can no longer be carried, in physical form, from apartment to apartment every one to two years. let's face it: since 2004 i have lived in chicago; but i have moved four times and i don't have that library i have always wished for (ah, what i would do to live alone in a two bedroom apartment!)

so i suppose, unless i become a wealthy and narcissistic archivist of myself i must learn to stop collecting. this prospect is quite frankly depressing. it doesn't deserve a second thought. i am, naturally, a collector, a cataloger, an archivist. so i create this space where i hope to store those things i value, such as the bar napkins either written on in the midst of events, moments, or conversations. i value those things as momentos.

during the past few days i have been carrying these bar napkins around with me. they will disintegrate in my purse, rattled around with everyday contact, but posted here they have the chance to become reflective pieces... whether they be lists of favorite dinosaurs, all the 50 (or 51!) United States darryl and i can try to remember, or momentos of the night when margeaux excitedly (and then reluctantly) judged a poetry slam contest. here i hope they will live and become part of a complex archive of my present. enjoy.