(no subject)
So today is Spring Cleaning day here at the Newmark household. Mostly it involves removing all of the beguilingly crappy furniture that we've neglected (including a wood-encased television and a piano that makes a genuinely horrible noise when you play it) to sell on eBay, cleaning out our rooms and closets, and taking care of the nine huge boxes of stuff that I shipped from Vassar back home. There's a mound of clothes behind my chair here that I've been folding for the last 10 minutes without making a dent. As I'm diving into my endless clothing and looking forlornly around my room, I (and the rest of my family, I'm sure) am just aghast at the amount of clutter that has amassed in algae-like function in the house. It really hit me when I went to find a place for my care bear doll (a present from the CARES hotline at Vassar) and realized that I didn't have anywhere to put it. I've just managed to cut enough trails from my bedroom door to my computer chair, bathroom and closet that I'm not stepping on anything that isn't the floor most of the time. Man, it is going to be hell trying to take care of everything in here one of these days. The sheer amount of dried up pens that call this place home! I could make a damn log cabin out of them!
I'm also hesitant to really tear this place up because some of what's in here will probably make me cry. Items date back to over a decade-and-a-half ago, and some things speak to greener pastures. There is a box of miscellany that my first girlfriend, whom I dated for two years, gave to me, which I shoved summarily under my bed after we broke up. Probably a bad idea. Even stuff like that, though--stuff that emits this miasma of loss--is so difficult to make disappear. What kind of people would we be if we burned everything that once made us happy? I'm keeping some clothes in my closet that I'll never wear again, like my cross-country meet commemorative t-shirts, because they're, well, commemorative. Feel like I'd be giving away a piece of myself. This room will probably never be clean again.
I'm also hesitant to really tear this place up because some of what's in here will probably make me cry. Items date back to over a decade-and-a-half ago, and some things speak to greener pastures. There is a box of miscellany that my first girlfriend, whom I dated for two years, gave to me, which I shoved summarily under my bed after we broke up. Probably a bad idea. Even stuff like that, though--stuff that emits this miasma of loss--is so difficult to make disappear. What kind of people would we be if we burned everything that once made us happy? I'm keeping some clothes in my closet that I'll never wear again, like my cross-country meet commemorative t-shirts, because they're, well, commemorative. Feel like I'd be giving away a piece of myself. This room will probably never be clean again.