- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1666
Finally, today it's done. "I did it", but it wasn't just me, I had a lot of help from the daughter. It would have been easy had it been anyone else's shit, mine own, it stinks.
I'll say it again. She's a trooper.
That said - Empty Locker, VERY FULL APARTMENT - and only a couple of days to downsize it all. It won't all go, I'm sure, but I have to take the photos, try, at least, always, try...
A lot of shit sold and I don't have the merchant heart I thought I did, in the end it just wore me down, but it persuaded me, for sure, not to go buying any more shit. Not that it would fit...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1970
The only casualty in the moving stuff from the locker, a drawer filled with buttons dumped onto the road, buttons, glass, everywhere. So the daughter and I cleaned up as best we could, we had nothing to put them in and so filled a rubber boot I had in the back of the car, a few evenings spent sorting and rinsing, picking out the broken shards of glass, broken buttons, a surprising number survived.
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1547
Can't seem to get a job, can't seem to quit one...
A tentative date to restart, long commute but worth it, it's a happier place by far in the Summer, I've a month to get things under control, to make a few prospecting trips and hope that alternatives present themselves, then back to life on the logging cuts and campground showers, they've promised a better schedule so I can commute back to Calgary on days off, we'll see, I'm still hoping to turn up treasure - as good as it is, there's room for improvement.
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1987
More boxes of notes, pictures, ideas, writing, ephemera, souvenirs. Juvenalia. I read, and unlike other batches I'm not so surprised at occasional insight or brilliance, it's all garbage. Rip-it-up, rip-it-up.
I am surprised by the newspaper clippings. Interesting, yellowed, fading, from before the internet, when the entire media wasn't controlled by 1 or 2 giant outlets, and I'm pleased by the remembrance of newspapers worth reading. These I can pass on.
Time now to start in on the books...
The last 3 days, they've been a tear, I've been going through everything, sorting, piling, counting, inventorying, taking - to the e-cycle (e waste, old computers, cell-phones), to the thrift shop, to the garbage, to buyers from Kijiji...
Now to the books. The first pass, 80% gone - there's something sacred about books - this, this, it's a castration of sorts, but not, they are eaten, somewhere inside me now, and even if I can't remember they're there. I make a list, take pictures of the teetering stacks that are going, there will be a few trips I'm sure. The first pass, 80% of the books go, I could let them all go, 1 pass, just let them go, but - I need a map of where I've been. And maybe I'll need to stop here again.
I take them to "Fair's Fair" - the only used bookstore in town, a couple dozen boxes, the only used bookstore in a city of a million people. What does that say? My God...
And they don't do cash for books on weekdays, only weekends, and so they'll all hang in the car until Friday. Meanwhile I review the authors, make lists to ensure I don't pass this way again, I've read them all, I don't need credit on books, I've in my possession a hundred, easily, yet to read, and Calgary, well, it's not such a literate town, I've searched here time and again, they've nothing I need, nothing I haven't read...
3 days of busy, today - less productive, my regimes, early in the morning - meditation, etc: I've lapsed, but I'm far enough along that I repent it. The car is filled with books, I can't get to the locker, not properly, not fill the car, but - now - it's just the living room, half of which is a mess, and I've only a month to go - if I can make it - before my life is under control. 2 months and I'll be a Zen God. So hold my breath, rip-it-up, empty the trash, everything will be fine.
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1703
Rip it up, rip it up. But I take a moment to peruse - not read - everything, and - a lot of it, most of it, appalling, but - remarkably, not all, and in the drawing arena I'm surprised to find a few sketches that aren't so bad. By which I don't mean good, just not the worst, I scan through, remember old ideas - briefly, we're breaking the logjam, there are fewer days ahead than behind, rip-it-up, rip-it-up,...
Overwhelming, because it's all my shit, if it was somebody elses, anybody elses, I could breeze through here in a day, for everyone it's the same, dealing with their own shit takes forever, dealing with somebody elses is easy.
I find some old notebooks of "wants and needs", diaries of my material ambitions, and surprising how many I realized, given my hunger, a lot of the shit I wanted 20, 25 years ago I now have, and laughable given that I'm in the process of getting rid of it all...