A Box

[Doreen Peri]

In the end, all that's left is a box.

Inside the box are photographs and letters. Memorabilia. Confetti. Pressed flowers. Ticket stubs. A journal perhaps. Newspaper clippings.

When you leave, someone will have to go through the box and decide what to keep. They will need to either store the chosen remainders in another box in their closet or throw it all away.

Who is the executer of your estate? Why do you keep such trinkets and trivialities? What purpose will they serve?

In the end, all that's left is a box.

Two, really.

The one you will reside in while worms eat away into your skin and organs..

And the one which others will have to sort through.

Cremation is a better idea. Why save a paper trail of memories? Nobody but you will remember who those people were in the photos.

Ticket stubs, newspaper clippings, confetti? Why do you hold on to such things?

Burn it all now.

[judih]

kindling for the memory pyre

[mousey1]

The thought of setting alight my past burns me not at all.

It's like sending up an offering of what I was.

The best pictures, trinkets, life memories are in my head.

Send me up in smoke and ash.





After the funeral
The family gathered round
They opened up box after box
And found
Nothing

[Doreen Peri]

judih
The memory pyre. Yes!
Time for a bonfire.

mousey1
"After the funeral
The family gathered round
They opened up box after box
And found
Nothing"
Love that!

Thank you!

[stilltrucking]

one half avacado, four dollars and change, darkened apartment, one hundred and six degree ambient conditions and humidity like walking in molasses. apartment cool, electric meter spinning. bills paid for july. pleasure mad writer has one more avacado. If I don't get busy, the wolf will be at my door.
I love dogs, I suppose I could learn to get along with a wolf

a box, hippies look good in the box
Rose accumulated things over her career as a antique dealer. But after her second or third heart attack, I forget which, she started to lighten up, giving away her treasures. For some reason I wound up with the pictures, I got a few trinkets, an opal ring, her gem stone with rubbies and diamonds. But most of all it is the pictures. Reminds me of "Rose Bud" strangers going thru my boxes all these sepia pictures of the gone world's people.

They opened up box after box
And found
Nothing

interesting.

thinking about jimbo's
drowned mouse

about fifty five or was it fifty six years ago
walking thru a junk yard I came across a toilet, the bowl was full of rain water and a drowned kitten. A leason learned about death when I was about eight. I stared and stared, trying to make it move, but it lay still, I noticed the decay, this had not just happend. I was in denial, I ran to my father and the other men and told that a kitten was drowning. I remember that look they all gave me. It was pretty much the same. Smiles all around and then indifference, they went back to their negotiations. the only box I am thinking about is the ones who are going to have to carry my plain wooden box. I would like to lighten up, loose about forty pounds. Looking forward to the maggots. Have you ever laid down somewhere in total peace, where sleep was like death, so bring it on. I got hold of bad can of mushrooms, must have had some botox in it. froze my brain, I lay there and thought about calling EMS to have my stomach pumped but except for being so cold it was a pretty nice feeling. maybe a too easy path to enlightenment, but I want to go as fast, go as hard, go as wild as I can take it
"rolling hard, rolling fast, rolling bye" Robert Earl Keen song.
going to have a boom box in there with these old bones, lithium batteries.

[Doreen Peri]

I had emptied all my bookshelves from the dining room and bedroom because I needed to move the furniture so I could have new floors put in. The carpet was nasty and old.

So, after i moved it, I decided I'd not put it all back. There was too much stuff... papers, journals, portfolio pieces, books... all of which I'd never touch again and didn't need any more.

I was going to clean it out... give away books I'd read but didn't want to own any more, throw the stuff I didn't need any more away.

But no... I didn't go that route. I've just been putting the mess back where it was... Maybe it will be more orderly for a while. I donno.

I wish I could throw this crap out.

Reminds me of a poem I wrote a long time ago called "stuff."

"Stuff" was one of my first posts to Litkicks. I remember an accolade from Craig. Wonder what happened to him. He is such a unique and dynamic individual. "cat" was his screen name or something like that.... judih probably remembers....

Anyway, what's with all this stuff? I don't want it any more. My sister wrote me and told me, "you keep it because it's you." Well, hell, I'm just as much me traveling lightly staying in a hotel room with no luggage at all.

That's a great dream of mine. To live in hotel rooms all over the world with no belongings whatsoever.

[judih]

yeah. i look at the stuff on my shelves and only when i have to move, or when i get that huge tidal wave intent in my heart do i bring on the garbage bags and begin to sort through it all.

one ingenious alternative is a pretty tie dyed silk scarf i made and once wore and now available as a curtain to hide almost a third of one shelf.

Craig Moore is alive. He's now i'mhep at litkicks. He posts there and has stopped posting at deoxy.org, his most loyal address.

He doesn't answer e-mails but occasionally responds to poetry.

He's written a book and is embarking on another. Haven't read a word from either project.

Stuff can be suffocating. Perhaps after an especially invigorating or aggravating set of life events, i shall be released from the weight of my shelves.

stuff is only stuff, after all.

[Doreen Peri]

"i'mhep", eh? Great name! And he is! Thanks, judih! Too bad Levi won't let me go there and interact with Craig. I'd love to read some of Craig's posts and reply to them but I don't go where I'm not wanted.

Tell him I said hello, ok? I miss him. His energy and wit and creativity.... a delight! I miss a lot of people I can't get in touch with any more because Levi locked the door to me. I guess Levi just doesn't like me or something. Who knows? I can't figure it out. Oh well. No problem. But if you see anybody who you think might want to touch base with me, feel free to pass along my email address.

Stuff sucks. Especially "stuff" that's built up in people's minds for no reason at all. Well, it's my website, so I guess I can speak about all that "stuff" anyway. Why not?

Life is short. Eat dessert first. That's what I always say.

Here's the original "stuff" poem i wrote in 2000 and posted at litkicks when you first met me... just reminiscing.... I miss Litkicks. I miss all my friends there. I have emailed a few who's names I found posting there but I was told to stop emailing people from the site. My reply was, "I thought people display their email addresses because they want to get email." Anyway, I hope to hear back from Robert Snow and several others one day......

stuff

maybe i'll just pack up all my stuff and
head out to california
try to find ferlinghetti
so he can teach me to be a
poet laureate.
on second thought, maybe
i'll just sell all my stuff
or throw it away
there's too much stuff anyway.
all i really need is this machine
and some paper and pencils
and ink and watercolors
so i can write and draw some
stuff.

who needs
knicknacks and 5 pairs of shoes?
who needs blue willow china
anyway? paper plates will work
just as well.
can't get rid of the books, though
despite the fact they're gathering dust
i'm inside of each one of them.
when it all comes down to it
the whole problem is about stuff.
everybody wants more stuff
better stuff bigger stuff
stuff with somebody's designer
name
on it, stuff that screams
i'm on top of it
i have more stuff than you
better stuff than them
stuff that says i deserve all this stuff.

people get stuff they don't need
and sometimes their stuff means more
than their grandmother
sitting alone in a one room
sterile studio apartment
in an assisted living facility
paying $200 a week for medicine
just to stay alive
all her stuff packed away
and shipped off to family members
to store until she dies
because the assisted living facility
doesn't have enough storage space.
so, the family members hold her stuff
and can't wait until it's their stuff.
after all, there are antiques in there
that could be worth something one day.

but i say, who needs antiques
and 5 pairs of shoes
and a collection of duck decoys?
who needs 293 cd's and bose speakers?
oh wait. can't get rid of the cd's
i'm in all of them somewhere
'cause what would life be without
jazz and blues?

well, anyway, here i am ranting about
all this stuff
and i have so much other stuff to do.
i have to unpack all that stuff in the attic
and figure out whether to keep it or sell it
and move that stuff piled up on the dining room
table and figure out whether it's his stuff
or my stuff and there's
parts of me in those boxes
and i don't even want to open 'em.

so, i think i'll just toss all the stuff
get a backpack and throw my jeans in there
along with a couple of t-shirts
my good pair of boots, of course,
oh and a pair of heels just in case
i want to dress up and go do some
fun stuff like go dancing or
walking downtown in san francisco
looking for ferlinghetti to
teach me how to be a
poet laureate

and i'll have to ship myself this machine
and the paper and pens and pencils
and watercolors and of course,
my cds and bose speakers
and all these damn books
which are collecting dust

but y'know what?
nobody ever sat on their deathbed
and said

i wish i'd had more stuff


doreen peri, 5/21/2000

[judih]

If i could dissolve all my stuff in a poem,
i think i could stop writing




p.s. bizarre web situations are another 'stuff' category. i never clean out my 'favourites' but i do streamline my favourite visiting places.

Some i keep around for anthropological reasons and others i keep around till i discover they're long out of date.

time to shower and get off my net sitting ass. life is worth living only before 8 a.m. and after 8 p.m. round here. If i miss the cool enough to breathe hours, i'm out of luck.

j

[Doreen Peri]

enjoy your morning, judih...

each new dawn
a blessing of sun-up,
each fresh breath
on a new day, a recognition,
a way to play a tune never
played before and i am headed
there, too, through the dor,
some left behind, wondering,
their new vision hopeful,
all of us finding our way

love you!

[joel]

When you leave, someone will have to go through the box and decide what to keep. They will need to either store the chosen remainders in another box in their closet or throw it all away.

Jojo knew the pearly address,
knew the house and street and number,
knew the gates where heaven opened
to a soul who truly needed:
to a boy whose life seemed nothing;
to a boy whose friends were absent
conversations of his making
stored within imagination—
artificial, non-existent.

Heaven image: perfect garden
state and Jojo’s was New Jersey,
was his paradise of welcome,
was his place where life, he found it:
there was Baba, there her welcome.
Not as friend, as not his making,
but the welcome he so needed:
she the welcome he so welcomed,
she the garden heaven imaged.

Baba was a special angel—
special in her ways so humble,
special as she never hid her
nature midst the hosts of heaven.
Baba gave no condescension,
never lied about her mission,
never lied and said she wasn’t
called to bless her blessing onward,
called to bless her blessed Jojo.

So he came to her and loved her,
came to share her laugh and blessing—
Jojo, through but heaven summers,
dealing past his awkward loneness,
dealing handfuls of Canasta
he and Baba dealt between them
from the cool breeze of her deck chairs
and the closeness of her kitchen:
sweet iced tea and more than friendship.

She was beautiful, his Baba,
beautiful, both out- and in-side,
beautiful past words to tell it.
She was beautiful: she loved him
and he begged her, “Never leave me.”
Baba gave no condescension;
Baba had no lust to leave him;
Baba was an honest angel,
ancient angel, mortal angel.

Baba gave her all to Jojo,
gave her wealth of faith and stories.
Baba blessed with what can never
burn or fade or rust forgotten:
as her wings could fly no longer,
work a little, rest a little,
from her chair she blessed her Jojo
with the stories of her faith-life
reliquaried neck and fingers

and in tongues she spoke her blessing
through the laughter of her kisses,
toothless, wet, Miss-Piggy-kisses;
through the Slovak of her Baba,
Baba’s blessed generations;
through the silence of devotions
in her darkened morning corners
where she prayed on her commission,
prayed on faith for all her angels.

As her wings could fly no longer,
Baba blessed her Jojo further:
not the house of all their summers,
not its rooms and deck and garden,
not its setting of her stories,
not its setting of her welcome,
of her welcome he so welcomed:
not that house was heaven’s address,
but the love they shared between them.

“Oh my Jojo; oh my Jojo;
there are ways I’ll never leave you:
in your dreams and love and being,
in this love we share as heaven—
love that only God has offered—
in such love, I’ll never leave you.”
So spoke Baba last her blessing,
last time Slovak words: “I love you.”
Ja vam l’ubim, moje Baba.

All those bits of heaven’s address
had their meaning in a blessing,
in their context: Baba, Jojo;
good news passed between two angels,
good news passed in faith and stories.
Jojo knew the pearly address,
knew its threshold pains and laughter,
knew true heaven is too big for
little relics lacking Baba.

Jojo felt a cool breeze comfort,
like the breeze of deck Canasta,
like the wings of angels’ flying,
like a whisper, God was saying:
“So is love in all true glory
to a boy whose friends were absent
conversations of his making
stored within imagination—
artificial, non-existent.

Such finds love in all true glory,
such finds movement, real and present
(not in relics made to meanings,
not in voice assigned to trappings
given lofty false-friend status)
love addressed beyond still borders,
love addressed in love dynamic,
heaven honest as it should be.”
Ja vam l’ubim, moje Baba.

[Zlatko Waterman]

Dear Doreen:

Surely lightening our earthly load to near nothing as we march to the grave is a worthy goal. Most of the people I admire most went out of the world with nothing or near nothing.

But a legacy of objects or writings or pictures or other detritus of a life over is another matter.

For example, since memory is all we have to connect us to the dead, I am pleased that I possess one, and only one thing from my dead father, who moved to the other side in 1968, when I was 23.

I have his large, heavy, steel-rimmed magnifying glass, which he used every day to sort his valuable coins, being a numismatist.

I carved and carefully finished and varnished a solid oak handle for it after he died.

I don't have any samples of his handwriting ( he was a fine calligrapher-- no doubt that's my "drawing" gene . . .), and I have one recording ( from a manufactured, but never distributed--78) of him singing big band songs of the 40's.

These are the only things that connect me to our life together.

I suppose I would qualify your wish for myself, then. and say that "stuff" which prompts memory-- good or bad-- comforts me.

An artist's work is another matter.

I am piled high and nearly crowded out with literally thousands of drawings and hundreds of paintings.

Some ( perhaps many-- I don't record them dutifully) of my pictures are in the houses of strangers, hanging in front of the faces of teenagers and octogenarians as they scamper or wheel or pivot by, reflections flashing.

Some of my best work has become gifts for friends.

Some images I have scattered electronically here on the Net-- and strangers have looked at those and even returned a comment or two.

Since I live a life ( by choice) devoid of children and have long ago vanquished any relatives from my attention, the pictures and what I have written are all that remain.

Inadvertently, pieces of my writing sometimes pass before the eyes of readers I never know or see. That happens less often today, since I now concentrate on visual art.

I would like those things I have made to survive, truly vain creature that I am.

Right now:

I am re-reading the essays of Montaigne. My wife bought me a marvelous Stanford University Press hardbound library-style version printed in 1957 and heroically tranlated by Donald Frame

http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?book_id=0485%200486%20


You will notice that a new copy ( still available in 2005) of this book in cloth is $90. She paid $20 for the 1957 impression, complete with glossy Brodart jacket and in perfect condition, having been lovingly handed down by its former owner.

But the copy you buy today is not the same as my venerable 1957 edition. The "buckram" in today's book is not really buckram, for instance-- the fabric is not as stiff or resilient-- it is soft cloth. And the volume is not Smyth-sewn by hand-- AND my copy is also scored at each signature, so it lies perfectly flat without damage, something very, very rare in manufactured books today, particularly copies of the complete Montaigne ESSAYS.

I would like this piece of my "stuff" to go to someone worthy, or to a library, when I am ashes.

Likewise, among my possessions are some mandolins and guitars eighty or ninety years old, still making wonderful music ( when I can manage to play them halfway well).

I would like them to keep singing after I am dead.



Zlatko

[stilltrucking]

this string just grows better and better

Baba,

Alamo Rose she never spoke of heaven
She told me of no angels
She thought life was beautiful
A simple dream of happiness she wanted for her daughter
But her daughter wished she had never been born
Happy endings take time
but time loves happyendings
Never to late for a daughter to feel her mother's love

the greatest gift Rose left her children was empty boxes

After the funeral
The family gathered round
They opened up box after box
And found
Nothing

what ever she had she had given her children from the momment of her birth, strange thing for a son to look upon his mothers shriveled withered naked body. She had used it up

Some i keep around for anthropological reasons and others i keep around till i discover they're long out of date.

I wish I was a poet too
a poet laureate
resting on his laurels

can't get rid of the books, though
despite the fact they're gathering dust

started over so many times every move gets rid of dusty books, some always stay, over the years books I have lost in moves haunt me. For some reason I have been able to hold on to one book for almost thirty years, bought it in Morro Bay California, (Morro Rock is one of the seven sisters)


Doreen I know less about poetry than I do about music, so take this with a large boulder of salt

Your poetry knocks my socks off





the sea whispers

all i really need is this machine
and some paper and pencils
and ink and watercolors
so i can write and draw some
stuff.

[stilltrucking]

I got here about three years ago, my first piece of furniture was a yellow lawn chair and a card table. Life was sweet, I felt so free.

There was a time I could pack all my wordly possessions in the boot of a Porsche.

And as I dry out and start feeling like a leaf in autumn, I have nailed my feet to the kitchen floor. I haunted the thrift shops around here for months, accumulating stuff. Just to keep me from blowing away again.
What used to keep me mindful were all the plaques and stuff, the mundane detritis of a life time donated to the thrift shop by the relatives of someone who got too old and had to move on. Life time achievment awards from an employer, bowling trophies, diplomas, military commendations, ...

I liked your poem a lot robertsnw
it took about 15 years off my age.

thanks for posting it Doreen

[hester_prynne]

I have really downsized.
Threw it all away, kept only what made my heart jump at the thought of not having. It wasn't much.
Naw, after awhile, stuff becomes a warden, and you the owner of the stuff, become the prisoner of it.
Let it all go I say.
There's more around the corners, abundance is there, plentiful and for the having, but first you have to let go of what you think you own.
Hell, I say let go of thinking you own anything.
H