To quote : "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood." Mr . Rogers . I don't know if he said it first , but he made it famous .
Day II
There is an ancient tome on my bookshelf -- at least it looks impressive . Between the gold embossed covers lie unread a lot of print that may or may not be relevant ; my bet leans to ‘may not .’
Also in the weighty book is an envelope .
I’ll elaborate : In my home I have a collection of things -- mementos -- that I’ve saved to commemorate certain events . Everyone does this , mostly with snapshots ; I do it with scraps of paper , flower petals , random pebbles , let’s just say whatever is lying around at the moment of the momentous occasion.
On my nightstand sets my currant library book ; it is about jams and how to make jams and the ingredients that go into jams and also in there is a piece on syrups and the best maple trees to collect these syrups from . No , not really , I don’t even like jam . But there is a library book , probably science fiction , and stuffed between page 222 and 223 is an envelope and written on the envelope is the title of every book I’ve read for the past six years and because that list is pretty long inside of the envelope are pieces of paper that continue this list of read books up to the last book I read ( The Many Lives of Mountain Jack ) and sometimes if the book is obscure to me I will include the authors name , too ( Emilio , Bob , Randolph the 3rd ) .
Did you know that in Britain they will put the period ( stop ) inside of the parenthesis ?
That little bit of info aside , and getting back to the weighty tome and it’s envelope , every little piece of stuff that I’ve collected has a tie to my life . Some of these things are easy to decipher , and recognizable , like lists . Others , not so much . Under my bed is a shoebox ; on my closet shelf is a stack of notebooks ; in my garden is a footpath: all of these things contain a clue as to my whereabouts and activities for much of my life .
Here’s my problem : I’m getting older every day , and while I imagine my heart and lungs and other bits will continue on for the next 30 or 40 years , I’m sure my memory is surely , ever so slowly , failing and will beat most of the rest of me to the quick .
So what is all this stuff going to get me , I mean , already I don’t remember what this little multi-colored rock is supposed to signify ? This other one here , it’s whitish and smooth and tiny , is from the grass at Mt . Vernon : that event dates back to the 70’s . Here’s a little pebble , resembling actually a bit of gravel , that I stooped to pick up after stumbling over the finish of my first 10K . Among this menagerie of geology resides a sleek , flat , black rock I picked up along a stream while hiking and nearly loosed into the water , but I decided against it : I enjoyed that solitary walk in those woods ; I wish I remember where they were . And I wish I remember where I picked up this little multi-colored rock and what is it supposed to signify ?
I don’t so much like to collect stuff , even though I have my fair share of useless junk , as I do memories . Right now I can walk out my back door and onto the garden path and step over the bricks and onto a flat rock picked from a beach in Alabama and recollect exactly what transpired that afternoon ; there is a stone set into a wall that hails from Colorado ; here is an ancient paver dug out of a pile of refuse from a local hike . These I recognize and sometimes will stop to look at and think back upon . In twenty years will I know why that chiseled gray rock is set amongst the bricks ? Will I still live in this home ? Will the new residents care ? Will they have ripped up the garden and replaced it with boring grass ? Will I have plucked every memory from the grounds and hauled them along for the ride of the remainder of my life ?
You know , I think I might have some housecleaning to do …
Toodles .
