And that’s how it was. I’d start off with an army, like the center of a flower with its petals radiating outwards in all directions. Bright blue, a searing fire engine red. Bottles for water and covers for the bottles. Containers to measure out my life into- lives that leaked into spilled words: messages contained in phones. Then coverlets for the phones. Music-boxes and covers for the music. Glasses to see clearly and glasses meant to obscure. Covers covers, boxes and cases. A silver box to capture things as I saw them; a book to capture things as I thought they were. Maybe another box to tie them all up together. If I was lucky, covers for the covers, thin anonymous plastic bags to Arrange and to Organize.
I’d find it crushingly embarrassing to talk about the weights I’d thrown away. I was repulsed by the very suggestion of a possession: the putrid look of smug ownership, the greedy grasping act of hiding and keeping, hoarding and possessing. I was pushed towards The Lost and Found, would be overcome by a wave of nausea. I’d only be able to breathe easily once I’d realize that I could never find anything that could be traced back to me there. Then I’d stand and watch, rifle through the discards of generations. Picked and chose that which could never be mine- the only thing I’d be comfortable using. This way I didn't have to lose to be free, I could find, and stay free. It shamed me to admit that I was ever in a state of debt towards a weight, that I could ever have been owned, been made more complete by something that I then chose to discard. You’re careless. And yet it wasn’t a careless tossing out, the departure of every such object in my life was marked out in a definite corner of my brain, the crossing over from the known, the place-able to the unknowable was an Event, a cause for a private celebration, heralding as it did another step towards my private nirvana.
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