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DVD's, CD's, Photographs and Letters
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1945
Pruning, pruning. Look at the photographs, colors washed already and barely 30 years, bad photographs of people who's names I struggle to remember, of places, I was a bad photographer, candid snapshots, "scenic photographs" done a million times better by a million other people a million times since, tear them up. Letters from people long forgotten. Tear them up, tear them up. Save, one, two maybe per album - If I can't remember, what will the children make of it?. I won't come this way again. Tear them up, tear them up.
Another box, DVD's, really? When? Never mind. They can go in their own pile, to the thrift shop.
CD's - a few will get a listen, the rest, the mixed tapes of forever-ago, tastes change and if you need to live in the past there's always AM radio...But they can wait for sorting, I've enough on my plate for the moment, trunks of photos, letters, notebooks to be shredded or annotated. And the CD's - maybe a few classical ones I can save, YouTube can get overwhelming with their ads, a CD promises a more focused and thoughtful listening experience.
I'm trapped here, imprisoned, in the dismal cave of memory, tear it up, tear it up, easier to just walk away but that sorts out nothing, and there's a lot here to be sorted...
Blue - Krzysztof Kieślowski
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 1271
An old movie by a favorite director, I'm not sure that I've seen this. Ever. I'm glad I didn't, sometimes you find exactly the right thing at exactly the right time...
Low
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 1088
The weather, lack of exercise, imprisoned in the cave of memory, not writing, no inspiration, or abundant inspiration, merely lacking in the ability to prune it, giving shape, it's never the writing that's the work it's the editing, and history was written with scissors and glue...
A friend over, raiding, builds a small pile, then, finding a pair of candlesticks, the wrong pair, I have so many but she's picked the wrong ones, I'd given her the provenance, bought in London, 300+ years old, now she's taken a fancy and of course I'm giving them away...No. No. Put them back. They are not for you. This is the summary of our friendship, in - what? 5? 7? years, a dozen "lets go out for drinks...", she's paid maybe once. Maybe. Sure, I'll say once. And now this rifling the bones, she'll buy me a drink, no, 2, a quick summary of her pile suggests a fine dinner but let it go, let her go, this "friendship" - well, it was ----
This recalls another friendship. Another one, with a more intimate foundation that over time became - ? - more platonic. Intimacy - in the physical sense, required more imagination than I'm generally capable of, than I care to invest in a lover, than in her as a lover certainly, and so we were friends. And, tokens, we give friends things, I'd given her some candlesticks, no harm can come to them, old, 150 years, but candlesticks, they just sit there and so they were safe. And I'd given her a cigarette case, antique tobacco tin, which she promptly lost. Small thing, of no value really, and so you let it go.
I'd replaced it, with a sterling silver cigarette cigarette case, mint condition, 100 years old if a day, filled with hallmarks, beautifully engraved, the inside an antique gilt over the silver, a fine thing, a rare thing, a beautiful thing.
And one day, sitting in her car, piece of shit *&^%*&^#*&^@ - barely running - a metaphor for her life, and I find - under my feet, the cigarette case. Trodden with salt and snow, crushed, distorted, I picked it up, pocketed it again.
I asked her about it, it was around she said, "show me" I suggested, but she changed the conversation and I let it slide, kept the cigarette case, polished it up, restored it to it's former glory.
The daughter, she's over, somehow that cigarette case comes up, and I give it to her to examine...she's looking at it, and then asks about the marks inside...
I hadn't opened it. The gilt lining, it's been scored with a hundred little razor burns, cuts, white powder flattened into the embossed case, the friend, she's been grinding her cocaine in it, it's been her party case...
Fuck. I explain it to the daughter but I'm livid inside, furious, this "ownership" of fine things, there's never ownership, we - you - me - we own nothing, we are - at best - custodians of the past, and she has set fire to the past much the same way she's incinerated her future, her children, and inside, you know it, knew it all along, but a too generous nature credits people with a modicum of common sense, a baseline of decency, propriety, that upon any real investigation very few people have.
People, the shit you give them, it's nothing, it's better to burn it. Unless they've paid - what you've paid or more - it's worthless. And I think about it.
I don't know that I need friends. But if I do, if I do, I need better friends.
Lucky Mojo
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1847
I've linked to this before, but it's been 10 years and maybe you've forgotten. In any event, it's still an amusing site - with any number of charms, talismans, fetishes, juju's, what-have-you's to boost your luck and increase your mojo...
Link: http://www.luckymojo.com/
And their shop: http://www.luckymojo.com/catalogue.html
Without a doubt the most interesting shop on the entire WWW, Amazon, Ebay be damned...
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