Babel-Like Confusion

23 Days on the Calendar

Wonder if it’s the preoccupation with packing and preparing for departure, but these days I wake at around 6:00 a.m. and get up soon after. Certainly no reason to get out of bed so early, since I have no obligations other than to myself and the work of packing.

The sorting continues. Junk in this apartment is endless, and if I allow myself to be philosophical about it, it reeks of wasteful extravagance, sinful accumulation and an evil enslavement to ‘things.’ I honestly don’t know how I’m going to make my way through the mass of completely unneeded accumulated rubbish that is jammed and packed into closets. The number of boxes for shipping continues to grow, like some shaky reminder of Babel and Old Testament confusion. And the books… This morning I uncovered yet another forgotten three stacks. More fodder for the book burners unfortunately. If I shipped all the books in this apartment back to Florida I would have to move my bed out onto the patio. Doris Day and patio madness ain’t in it.

This morning great piles of old clothing, things not worn in years, got bundled into old cloth bags, and carried out for the scheduled pick up. Hard for me to get the days right in the city’s pick up plan, their schedule of what goes out on what day of the week. There is almost the feeling that the guys dislike certain categories of trash and leave behind things they don’t want to bother with, despite my adherence to the schedule. But this time we agreed, and when I looked out a while ago all the bags of old clothes were gone.

I packed nine glasses, six of them Japanese, three American, and all very old. It would disturb me greatly should any of them get broken in transit, since all are irreplaceable. Somehow I’m confident they will be okay in their cushioned bed of paper, plastic and soft cotton. Only a handful of breakable items remain to be packed and I’m now left to eat off three dishes, with one fork, knife and spoon, and to drink from a giveaway glass.

Happy about being able to give away a big stack of calligraphy supplies, the ink cabinet, and a George Foreman Grill. The first is too much and too heavy to ship, the second too big, and the third a duplicate of one I have in Florida.

Pulling stuff out of dusty old boxes this morning I came across the ‘Tilted Barber’ postcard. Something about it is close to perfect.