Did some decluttering with Chris today--that's the term we use for cleaning up piles of papers and junk that have accumulated and not moved for months. Or for years in fact.
One pile I decluttered included a birthday card from a friend who shared the upstairs of a house with me in the past. It said Happy 26th Birthday. Yikes that was some years ago. I'm just about to celebrate a birthday that is the number of years you get if you rearrange 26.
Yes, it has been a while. The card brought a flood of memories of the friend, the house we lived in, the other roommates who shared the second floor with us. One of them wrote a few thoughtful lines in their birthday card to me--acknowledging my pursuit of a career.
I knew I was a bit driven to get the necessary credentials and experience to become an art curator, but at 26 I thought I was laid back enough that no one would really notice. So that encouraged a small river of memories to come trickling in with thoughts of how my career, and my life, have turned out.
But let's stick to the lighthearted feeling of being 26. Actually, I found papers that dated back to even earlier when I was 21 and 22---wrapping paper showing a repeated pattern of an elephant with a birdlike figure held up in its curved trunk. If I was a novelist, I could use that as foreshadowing for what was to come many years later. My life today is deeply rooted in yoga and I love elephants, their compassionate nature, the intelligence that shines through their awkward frame.
I actually started wondering how I could put pictures with this writing--I knew I needed to get these words out--but didn't want the thing to look like a childish attempt at memoirs. Is that an oxymoron: childish memoirs? Perhaps I should add a sample of the elephant gift wrap to this post. Here goes:
I also found a few sheets of stickers from Cost Plus. It was heartening to get a feeling of continuity, if that's the right word, since I still go to that store during the end-of-the-year holidays to buy gifts made around the world. The only difference nowadays, besides higher prices of course, is that the store is called "World Market." The stickers kept getting shifted from one pile or box to another, and are still in my possession some 30-plus years later because they are very well designed. They were made in Germany and have a look I'm familiar with--having parents and grandparents who all started out in Germany. But that's a story for another day.
