Emotions Past

Im in the process of packing up to move house again. Given that this will be my fourth address in two years or my sixth in three, I'm a bit peeved by it all. I'm attempting to rationalize my belongings, to be ruthless in throwing things away. How successful I am depends on my mood and how much I look at things before I toss them. I was going through a box of things the other day and came across some of my old writings, things I did while I was still at school and for one reason or another was sentimental enough to keep. It was a mix of essays, stories, the occasional half hearted attempt at a novel, a diary and notes and letters to and from girl friends. It's funny, though, because although I recognize the handwriting - even though it has changed dramatically since then - I barely recognize the writer as me. I do not know this person from fifteen, twenty years ago. The certainty in her fiction, and mad raging anger of her notes, the snide snarky - well no, that part I do recognize. I can't imagine being so passionately angry about something that I would need to not only capitalise it when I wrote it, but I would underline the words so hard and so many times I would go throug the page. I do not remember being like that. I remember writing, constantly, always, with torch at night under the covers, in darkness when I had written so long that my batteries died. When I should have been doing homework. When I had finished an exam early but wasn't allowed to leave. I have vague recollects of writing myself out when I was feeling hard done by, but I can't imagine myself back to the person who could be so incandescent in her anger. These days I can muster a bit of a squiff, an occasional huff, perhaps a bit of a tantrum if you squat your eyes the wrong way. The only things that really get me up are my grandmother, work, and L. But the emotions I feel now don't generate nearly as much heat as that girl could. She fairly scorched the page. What happened to her? Where did that passion go? Where is the flame burning to write, to create worlds, to express fiery emotions that will not find any other outlet? How did that get replaced by quietly mocking, by sarcasm and by quips? Somewhere within, that other girl must still be there. I wonder if I can ever find her again, or if it's just my mood, a combination of nostalgia and perhaps a mild depression, bringing me to this point. Traditionally tortured artists are the ones who create the best works. Perhaps I should make use of this. If only I could over throw my apathy, I might. That's what I've grown into, though. The would-have, the should-have. That girl way back then, she was all about the could. A couple of little consonants, they change the shape of the world entirely.

Emotional baggage

It's that time of year again. The bit where I pack up my life and move house. I've done it so many years in a row now that it seems like second nature. I'm packing boxes, it must be September. And this time there are so many more boxes to move.

It's funny, though, because there are a couple of boxes that were never unpacked after the last move. They have stayed, intact, in the bottom of my wardrobe. No doubt they will do the same thing in the new place. Although perhaps not the wardrobe, given that it's somewhat smaller than the present model. But somewhere, out of sight, these boxes will sit until my next move.

They are memory boxes. One is filled with my childhood. Toys, dolls, bits of paper. It stays there against the day that somewhere in the future, I will have children of my own and will want to show them what it was like for me to grow up.

I remember being fascinated when my own mother pulled out her last link with childhood, a doll whose eyes no longer opened, whose hair was made of moulded plastic a slightly different shade to the head it was part of. Looking back now, it's a little sad that this was the only link she had kept to her childhood. Her girlhood moved house with her at the end of last year, a small blue suitcase that held nothing from the time after she was married. A few letters from the time when my father was working in a country town; odds and ends that held some value for her.

My own version of this case is in the second box that moves with me, untouched. It's a plastic crate filled with the random bits I have collected in my travels. Tickets to shows, exhibitions, on trains and planes; programs, photos, trinkets. It all means something to me now, evokes some memory of a time, place or person. In a few years, it is sure to mean less and, if I ever open it, I will probably feel the need to get rid of most of it, much like I did with almost all of the reminders of my school years when I finally cleared the bottom of my childhood wardrobe. But for now it stays in one piece, the baggage that I carry forward into the new house.