Recently, I was asked by my wife to empty drawers in a chest that I hadn't used in years to make room for some of her things. Once an integral part of my life, the drawers of clothing and odds and ends -- socks, underwear, barely used tee shirts, shorts and jeans, handkerchiefs, a non-functional pocket watch, heirloom cufflinks in case they ever came in handy, small miscellaneous trinkets, old wallets, expired checks and credit cards and most exotically of all an old jewelry box containing 3 vintage bullets of assorted calibers, almost certainly my father's originally, which I suppose had somehow been shunted to me in the division of his effects following his death -- had fallen out of use due to a long series of micro-evolutions in my daily routine that had migrated the storage and retrieval of most of my day to day wardrobe and accoutrements to the vicinity of the laundry room; it had gotten to the point that the old drawers had sat idle for much more than a decade, pushing two. In fact, until my wife asked me if I could see my way clear to bequeath them to her I'd forgotten about them. The request felt burdensome at first, and I put it off, but when procrastination was no longer an option, I experienced it as something of an excavation, even a journey back in time to visit a younger, thinner, more vital version of myself. Scanning the memory hole for what had happened to that person, I drew a blank. There was no trauma, no revolution, no ceremony or innovation, no abolition or transmogrification. To all evidence, that person seems to have systematically undetectably been assumed by this one. Alas. I couldn't have known then that my future was not going to be one that would ever involve a need for cufflinks.
The errand came at the end of a long weekend visit to the camp of some friends from the dawn of our adult lives, whom we hadn't seen in a few years. I had a nice time, but I had to admit had it not been for my wife who arranged the trip, I probably could have gone the rest of my days without seeing them. It has nothing to do with them for they are lovely people, but I recognize in myself a sort of growing indifference to people and places that are not immediately in front of my face. My workplace, for instance-- I haven't set foot in the building for almost exactly 17 months and I can't visualize what it looks like and have not the curiosity to care to refresh my memory. The same goes for travel to places I've once loved or never been but once wanted desperately to see-- I was reminded in one of those drawers I cleaned out of an extinguished wanderlust by a small collection of tourist maps that I'm sure were acquired aspirationally in that former life that it turns out simply had to be relocated with everything else to make room for things my wife actually uses today. I'm not sure if you gave me two plane tickets and all-expenses-paid accommodations to any of those places for travel tomorrow I'd know what to do with them.
Is something wrong with me? As long as I have people and instruments at hand that put the distractions and abstractions that keep me enthralled and occasionally involved in the project of living, I don't really care, but it might be good to know.
That younger self... When I was younger, it seemed to me that the United States was fundamentally, constitutionally, at core a nobly constructed entity. School taught me that it was structured as a continuing project, progressing as it should "in order to form a more perfect union." The structure involved the checks and balances of a set of 3 competing and complementary branches-- an executive that presided over things, setting the tone and enforcing laws, a legislative that set the laws and approved or disapproved of the executive's actions, subject and answerable as the executive was to public approbation in the form of regular elections by those they represented; and a judicial branch whose members, selected for their wisdom and acumen could wield their power as they saw fit thanks to the shield of permanent appointment to their office. My younger self through over-exposure to the vagaries, excesses and severe disappointments of neoliberal politics in the 80s and 90s was turned apolitical for his sanity's sake*, but this was only possible because of an enduring belief-- if I'm honest, a faith-- that thanks to the ingeniousness of its design, left to its own devices the more perfect union would ultimately prevail. Boy was he naive. What was he doing instead? Contributing to it.
As for the items from the drawer, they got dispersed. What wasn't sensible or ethically suitable to pass on went on the trash pile or got punted to other repositories in other corners of the house to be re-encountered in future reorganizations-- I hope I'll figure out by then how to dispose of bullets without harm-- but most were boxed up and deposited at a nearby thrift store donation center. They're someone else's burden now.
~~~~~
* The return of insanity on my re-engagement in politics demonstrates the wisdom of that strategy.
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