Scraps
New Orleans, LA
Rumor has it that the electricians are coming tomorrow. Maybe we will get an extra light fixture or two installed. Or the socket in the bathroom will be connected. Or they will leave more nails on the floor and in the carpet that we can find with our bare feet as we wander through the house with flashlights at night.
I spent much of the night sorting through a giant box of overflowing papers. I've got movie ticket stubs, airplane boarding passes, museum admission tickets, pamphlets, notes, Polaroids of Santa Elvis, postage stamps, and Mexican wrestling promotional fliers going back for the last 20 years and covering I don't know how many countries. The intention has always been to collage things into scrapbooks. Two scrapbooks have been started... and no scrapbooks have been finished. But the giant box is now at least organized. Spain and New Zealand no longer co-mingle. Mexico '98 is segregated from Mexico '04.
The scraps of paper have made old memories fresh again. The inexpensive hotel room in Delphi, Greece, with the balcony view of a steep gorge and the sea in the distance. Business cards printed in Japanese with my name in strange characters and the address and seal of my old school. An unused paper number from the waiting line at the Indian Embassy in Paris. A cardboard train ticket from a Turkish train that chugged past olive groves on it's descent through the mountains. A K&B paper bag from the defunct New Orleans drug store. Photos of friends willing to pose with plastic donkeys and sombreros on the steps of the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Obituaries of people long gone but unforgotten. Valentines from my former students.
Contained scraps. One step closer to collage time. One less thing in the electricians' way tomorrow.
Rumor has it that the electricians are coming tomorrow. Maybe we will get an extra light fixture or two installed. Or the socket in the bathroom will be connected. Or they will leave more nails on the floor and in the carpet that we can find with our bare feet as we wander through the house with flashlights at night.
I spent much of the night sorting through a giant box of overflowing papers. I've got movie ticket stubs, airplane boarding passes, museum admission tickets, pamphlets, notes, Polaroids of Santa Elvis, postage stamps, and Mexican wrestling promotional fliers going back for the last 20 years and covering I don't know how many countries. The intention has always been to collage things into scrapbooks. Two scrapbooks have been started... and no scrapbooks have been finished. But the giant box is now at least organized. Spain and New Zealand no longer co-mingle. Mexico '98 is segregated from Mexico '04.
The scraps of paper have made old memories fresh again. The inexpensive hotel room in Delphi, Greece, with the balcony view of a steep gorge and the sea in the distance. Business cards printed in Japanese with my name in strange characters and the address and seal of my old school. An unused paper number from the waiting line at the Indian Embassy in Paris. A cardboard train ticket from a Turkish train that chugged past olive groves on it's descent through the mountains. A K&B paper bag from the defunct New Orleans drug store. Photos of friends willing to pose with plastic donkeys and sombreros on the steps of the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Obituaries of people long gone but unforgotten. Valentines from my former students.
Contained scraps. One step closer to collage time. One less thing in the electricians' way tomorrow.
posted by Jennifer P. at 10:50 PM
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