then again

who can resist some good old fashioned scenic decrepitude?

forwards and backwards

It has been at least 21 years since my elementary school class buried a time capsule. I'm beginning to think Mrs. Spengler had no intention of leaving instructions for its retrieval. How many years did we say anyway, 10, 25, 50? This country's playgrounds must just be mine fields of abandoned time capsules. Another story adults tell children, and like most of those stories, told with perfectly good intentions. I'm sure there is that one district where someone's dad keeps track, and he shows up on the appointed day, shovel ready. But I know that watching the clock wasn't and isn't really the point. Mrs. Spengler, you did a good job.

I started thinking about Lincoln Elementary while I was digging around my own basement a few days ago. Like I said I've been contemplating the mail in offer lately, its heyday and decline. I came across this crash cover, another mail related obsession of mine. I guess I had forgotten all about it, but here it is, at the right time, rising to the surface. The cover itself was at least familiar, but I had completely forgotten about the rush coupon inside. I haven't been able to figure out what Coast Industries was, Los Angeles, 1950, anybody?

What a sad little novella this poor water stained envelope is. Mr. and Mrs. Prince, what happened to you? Mr. Prince were you dreaming of California, 52 and alone? I'm sure I don't even have to mention that I think Mrs. Prince might have felt there was some bitter irony to her married name. Is that the sad story, the modern one, or do you prefer the traditional one, the one where she died young, and so soon after the war. Either way, she's long gone and without even a name. And then the fire in Cadiz? Oh no.

No prior hypnotic training needed! I feel like I'm always burying things and digging them back up again. Refolding, resmoothing, reordering, putting away. Sometimes it feels like exciting and wonderful discovery, I remeet little perfect object being its delightful self, containing its weird old story. Sometimes I just wish I could keep everything out all the time, or at least not forget so much all the time.

It changes

This whole house burned to the ground, no one was home. It was a summer house, on the side of small mountain, and it was the middle of the winter. The fire department couldn't do anything. It had been snowing for days and the driveway hadn't been plowed. There was no one to plow the driveway, no one was home. This house burned completely freely, from start to finish, with no interference. It started, consumed everything it could, and went out by itself, steaming for days. I think it was a fuse, something like that, it was in the paper. It wasn't arson, it wasn't really even neglect. It just happened. It was an exothermic chemical reaction, acting on the material at hand, surrounded by a widening ring of snow. And in the end, every object was a fact. Every object had been one thing and now was something else. Every object had had a purpose and a life, a place, had all the attachments of the people who used them, remembered them, liked them or didn't. Every object is itself and is also a chain of everything it has ever been and everything it has ever meant.