I find them
all over, things I need to
hold on to,
words in clips and phrases, books by the dozen,
pictures and
songs. I can't help storing them,
I
can't help saving them as though I will one day
make sense of them, recombine them as my own. This
is what my life is like, blips and
fragments of
beauty,
dangling bits of stimulus that spark all
sorts of currents.
I can't help it.
On the shelf at home, I have a bowl full of
plastic goodies. And an
array of textured glass vases next to it, purchased
over different occasions. A sketch book, full of
humble attempts and self-portraits, erasers, 10 or so
pencils with different tips; various stages
of softness and points. Papers.
I need these things.
Piles of the papers: notebooks, cards. Scribbles
and printings and torn out of magazines, words and
words and words. Pictures from catalogs, clippings
galore, happy people, healthy people, pensive, pretty.
You can call me a pack rat, I won't mind.
But I don't think that's what it is. I don't know what
I plan on doing with them, but they appeal to something
inside of me. These are the things that make me wish I
could draw, wish I could sing, wish I could use
photographs to capture emotion. Wish I knew about
interior decorating and colors and evocative and
the words, at least I can use them in some
fashion, cutting and pasting, reworking them in my mind,
the words.
This is my life. Ain't it pretty?