Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Collections and Recollections
Damn but I slept hard last night. Maybe it was the rain on the roof, or several days of sleeping poorly and fitfully, or maybe it was the lovely roast pork tenderloin and veggies warming up my belly… along with some whiskey… and wine.... and a little port with chocolate for dessert.... naw, I guess it was just the whim of the fates, but whatever it was, I could barely get out of bed this morning. When the alarm went off I did not recognize it; I snoozed twice and fell so deeply asleep both times that I still dis-recognized the alarm when it went off the second and third times. But now I’m awake and feeling pretty well rested; I had a successful dental appointment (which always makes me feel better - once it’s over); and of course, Anisara Yoga tonight. (I think technically it’s spelled with a “u” in place of the “i” I used there, but I don’t want to do forward bends and down dogs in a discipline that refers to itself in any way as “anus.")
BUT: I’ll need all the energy I can garner for the weekend - a weekend that will include a dinner date in Santa Cruz with some beautiful bloggers and their spectacular spouses, a visit to Andy and Heidi to play with them and their lovely children - including three-week-old Gabe, and of course, the TOTAL REPAINTING OF THE BEDROOM.
Yes, it’s finally time to turn the sleeping chamber into an enlivening space. It’s a nice big room with big windows and hardwood floors, but that tired old dust-grey paint has got to go and now’s the time. In preparation for that endeavor I took some time cleaning up and cleaning out - especially my dresser. As I did this, I realized that it was a sort of mini-museum, or really, a collection of mini-museums - I had acquired three separate collections on and in it, each of which was meaningful to me. They’re so meaningful, in fact, that I’ve decided to share them with the cyberworld. That’s you, you lucky ducks!
Sadly, I have no collection of ducks, lucky or starcrossed. But I do curate the following dresser-based collections:
TEXTILES:
* 3’ x 6’ strip of blue cotton paisley-pattern fabric - remnant of much larger swath used in college as my ceiling tapestry.
* 10 T-shirts I do not generally wear:
> Blue tshirt with white architectural elevation drawing of Penn’s Furness Library (shrunken to be a bit too small to wear)
> Black tshirt with big white lettering on the general theme that YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE (unwearably extra large)
> Hand-batiked lavender tshirt with indian-derived images of a rock with feet-things, a stylized face, an antelope, a snake, and on the back, a spiral (cherished groomsmen gift from sister’s wedding)
> Beige long-sleeved tshirt with a silkscreened image of a young Jerry Garcia holding a guitar (quite snug)
> chaotically red, orange, yellow and purple tie-dyed tshirt with black silkscreen design of hallucinatory images all over the front of it (too intense for general use)
> Tiedye tshirt with blue “starburst” dye pattern and multicolored star silkscreen design (rather snug and worn very thin)
> Tiedye shirt with blue “waves” dye pattern and a black silkscreen design of a big skull among desolate ruins (doesn’t seem to fit quite right anymore)
> Grey tshirt from junior year (college) production of The Runner Stumbles, with a janus face in black that’s a priest (my character) on one side and a nun (my love interest) on the other (just not very flattering)
> Tshirt that I tie dyed at home when new but has since faded back to white, with a black line drawing of a skeleton reclining on Ventura beach playing guitar (my first Dead shirt, from my first Dead concert in 1983 - nearly worn out)
> Faintly lavender tshirt with a small square silkscreen image on the left breast of “age of exploration” monsters alleged to live in the Americas, and on the back, a long vertical sliver out of of a dictionary definition of the word “monster” (REM concert shirt from 1984 or ‘5, worn very thin and rather snug)
ITEMS LIVING ON TOP OF MY DRESSER:
* Dog nail clipper
* Cell phone charger
* Massage tool
* Little dish for sushi soy sauce, containing: a toy spacecraft and a compass/whistle on a lanyard
* About two dollars in loose change
* Buttons: 4 small white, 2 large black, 1 small black
* Turkish “evil eye” deflector (blue glass)
* Tin of Carmax
* Pin from SIEU local 535
* Galileo thermometer (a glass tube with colored glass ampules floating in liquid)
* Two wristwatches - one nice, one for exercise
* Old mug from childhood with a rabbit on it, full of pens and two temporary tattoos from Amy: a burrito and a helicopter
* Cassette tape (String Cheese sampler mix)
* Clock (radio-set to perfect accuracy) with indoor-outdoor temperature gauges and a ceiling projector
* Spray bottle of Nasacort nasal steroid for four-seasonal allergies
* Brass figurine of Humpty Dumpty looking dour and sitting on top of a small section of brick wall
* Two picture frames
* One picture “tree.”
PHOTOS:
* In frames:
> Kel grinning in Kauai, 1999
> Sydney the cat (may her memory be a blessing), looking out the front blinds in our apartment in LA
* On wire “tree” (a guest gift from my cousin’s bat mitzvah in 2003):
> Me in a canvas helmet liner looking quizzical (Wilkes Barre, about 1995)
> Me in large elf-like soviet-era East German ski patrol hat looking authoritarian (Sha and Helena’s condo in Palo Alto, 2004)
> Me in a play in college (King of Hearts) wearing a vest and seersucker pants (no shirt), singing with arm upthrust to the kleig lights to a woman in a gown and conical “dutchess” headdress (1985)
> Young Korean boy, grinning and squatting on the ground, holding a coca-cola can (late 1950s, taken by my uncle when he was stationed there with the army)
I am looking forward to a new look in the bedroom. Once we’ve painted we plan to change out the bed for a bigger one, and we’ll rearrange the furniture and maybe reconfigure the closets as well. It’ll be a whole new boudoir, or “newdoir,” as the French should all be saying if they had any sense. However, my semi-shoddy old unfinished dresser will not be part of the changes. I may sand it or paint it, but I want to keep it pretty much where it is and how it is: as a repository of clothes and of meaningful scraps of memory. I like having a piece of furniture that not only keeps my socks and underware from intermingling indiscriminately, but also reminds me on a daily basis of where I’ve been and where I’m going. And that ski patrol picture keeps me honest about it. Really, I don’t think I could get away with any crap with that guy staring at me. Even more so, because he’s me.
