(Part II) The things left behind

Or maybe it's a way to be remembered.

My close friend's friend/roommate died in a car accident last week. My friend is Wonder Woman, the way she's flying around, re-stitching their lives. The phone calls, the errands, the trips to the PD, the morgue, the arrangements, the things left behind. Cracking pass-codes and throwing away secrets found in pockets and drawers. Cleaning out the fridge and sorting shoes and jeans and underwear. IDing the body. Saving voicemails and texts, indefinitely.

And I wonder about the things I'll leave behind. Shelves packed with book sale victories and tokens from national parks. Hard drives with half-finished stories and thousands of pictures. Stacks of unmarked burned CDs, colored discs for every mood. Favorite movies, home videos, video projects. Socks with holes in them, piles of worn-in flip flops. Clean and unwashed lingerie. A Facebook page, a couple e-mail accounts forever collecting junk mail, this blog.

I wonder how to go about losing people. And how to differentiate memories from things left behind.

(Part I) Why I write this blog

To write a successful blog you are supposed to:

network
find a niche
update regularly
appeal to your audience
teach people something
etc. etc. etc.

I don't do any of those things.

Breadcrumbs

They're moving to Indianapolis, Ashville, Austin, New York City, Providence. They're jumping from the ground and drifting in the wind, floating, floating, until they land home.

They don't know what home looks like, but they know what it is not: It is not drafty houses and belligerent in-laws, it is not crumbling apartments and groups of trendy teenagers, it is not yellow grass and tall, looming ex-boyfriends.

I want to believe they will look back on this place fondly.

I wonder if I will always be longing for someone or something. Anywhere I am, I think of the places I am not. I want to split myself into a dozen pieces. I find the most mundane things nostalgic. I think melancholy is one of my favorite emotions. (Not to be it, but to feel it.)

I picked up my feet and got swept away, to the east. I think most of my breadcrumbs have disappeared.

exercise in silence

First day of April, and it's cold outside. Rain that leaves you damp all day, wind that slips in under the door and bites your ankles.

I wait for the days I can open the windows and breathe life into this place again, let flowers crop up in the carpet and have bees buzz in my ears while I make dinner. Feel renewed, alive, awake.

But I don't mind these days, the winter ones. I become the things around me, the old yellow chair and the antique table with the dents and scratches. These nights, wrapped in blankets and tucking my legs under me, I am comfortable being quiet and alone.