This was to be power tool /manual tool purge. Change in plan as no tools are going anywhere. Paper is a constant purge this year. I am being ruthless with this purging of files. This shot was taken some months ago. I have repeated with piles equally high. More than a barrel's worth of old legal and financial records (including divorce files) got shredded for the class compost bins we built.
I also emptied out files from my white storage folders and magazines in July when I got rid of the television. I needed the rolling cart to be relocated to the kitchen - where I'd moved out the refrigerator.
I bring this up and include the photos because I am continually struck by everything being connected . . . by repurposing . . . repositioning . . . rethinking . . . and the kind of sickeningly corporate sounding word: reprioritizing.
I have experimented with making paper maché from junk mail, compost material, packing material and a centerpiece. More on that last one Wednesday. But, the down side of this purge of paper is that I have grown way too comfortable having a paper mess always out. Piles of paper need to be gone before the end of the year. You heard it here.Now if I take on the magazine DIY project, I'll have that mess too. Oy.
I had a neat experience over the weekend when I hung out by the camp fire with neighbors Saturday night. One woman had a whole trash can filled with confidential files that she didn't want to hand feed into a shredder, so she fed the fire as we sat around laughing and talking that night. It was fun. She got her papers destroyed, we got some firelight and I get to put the ashes on the garden.
6 comments:
Spring and what's left of the hippies return
from old rooming houses and Mexico.
More letters, more journals, more poems to burn;
Real heat at last.
At last my words glow.
My friend Jim just broke up his band,
the guys all have jobs and the nights got too long.
He's selling the amps, one guitar, and the van.
I'm sure you could have it all for a song.
Snow on the north side,
trash in the yard,
love like a newspaper tattered
and stained.
A two bourbon twilight,
fog from God's cigar.
the neighbor's retarded dog chasing the train.
Don't see any good in just hanging around,
take a tip from the birds and
change the scene.
Find some long river and follow it down
to where our old sins have washed
up in New Orleans.
Spring and what's left of the songbirds return,
to fight about loving and nesting and such.
Thanks for the letters you sent back to burn.
Their smoke is as light, and as dark, as your touch.
Is that your writing? I love what it conjurs within me, especially the last verse.
oh no, that's Greg Brown. I bet it's on the 'net somewhere, if you want to hear it - it's a great song.
He's not famous, he's a folksinger. Though about as famous as a folksinger can be. Sort of like Tom Waits, if Tom Waits was from rural Iowa.
You can hear a cover here
http://www.nutsie.com/song/Spring%20Wind/4613546?album_id=4613537&artist_id=4005266
(that's Mary Chapin Carpenter singing, despite what the web site says)
or if you have realplayer you can hear Greg sing it in the track list here
http://www.redhouserecords.com/180.html
I used to get so homesick for Iowa City and just listen to his albums over and over, when I was on the East Coast & when I moved up here.
I actually went to YouTube and listened to him a bunch this morning after I'd written my reply.
Cat Stevens and Leonard Cohen were my generation and then I moved towards punk and alternative - Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson and Brian Eno. Then, I just stopped following most music. I believe Angel's death was part of this. I suspect music might have helped, but I just didn't go that way.
I think if it would have helped, you would have reached for it. Though it may be time to pick it up again, too.
I'm spotty in music, just like I am with books - if I find someone I like I read/listen to *all* of their stuff, and sometimes follow links from them to others, but I don't get deep into whole genres. So I have every single Greg Brown album, but I could only name 3 or 4 folk artists.
My folks only listened to Christian music, and my friends in high school were all metalheads, so I just thought I didn't like music very much until I got to college & discovered blues & modern folk, and then conscious hip-hop and R&B.
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