The most precious of my possessions arrived whole and well. The dental plate collection, false eye, glass slippers, antique ashtrays – everything in my scientific cabinet and the cabinet itself arrived without any damage. I’ve hung the paintings and photographs, sorted the zines, opened all the boxes to cull the best bits.
Even though this was the second big move in less than two years I still have random things that nobody should keep in their lives; old receipts (for example a faded record of grocery purchases in Olympia circa 1990), books I never plan to read, all the letters I have ever received and many of the tens of thousands I have sent.
Down at the bottom of a big box I found the songbooks. Now if the mood strikes I can look up the words to all the songs I used to know, though paging through these small handmade books makes me feel sad.
I put together the pamphlet we distributed at the Mudwrestling Hoedown, and it took hours of library research to find the perfect images of square dance instructions and wrestling guides, then an unknown number of additional hours to laboriously cut and paste the assemblage.
That particular event was a fundraiser but it was mostly just an excuse for lots of people to wear crazy outfits and roll around in the mud. There was a kissing booth and I was a popcorn girl.
Who won the wrestling competition? I cannot recall.
Later that summer, during my Travelers Party, this kid showed up in the middle of the night and sat on the porch with assorted people including James and Per. We traded macabre childhood stories and toward dawn he said that the place was a punk retirement community, the place people go when they can no longer deal with real cities.
These are the maudlin thoughts of a rainy afternoon in England:
I miss my friends, miss singing. But that place was not my home and I do not think I will ever find one. I doubt that such a thing exists. It will have to be enough that I have so many dear friends all over the world, that I have this eccentric small family, that I can keep moving on.