BEFORE
When the clutter is knee deep on the ground, when the books are in laundry baskets because there is no room for them in the bookcase, when the file drawers are so jammed with relics from the pre-digital age they bend and warp and can't be closed, it's time for a purge.
At first glance it would seem that a mess is a problem related to space, but upon closer inspection it turns out that the real issue is time. The books are straightforward -- even books read in the past are timeless -- but scratch the surface and there are time bombs and worm holes of every description lurking in the piles. The high-school yearbooks are expected, and the photo albums, and the baby books (Poppy's, Effie's, and mine). The college papers have been filed neatly away, at least, and the decades of journals line up in an aesthetically pleasing manner, but what about the rest of the stuff -- the old letters, the notebooks full of miscellany, the postcards from every museum in Europe? Then it gets tough -- what about the unfinished poems, the dead novels, the aborted dissertation in its own accordion file, the fan I slept with every night as a child, the carousel of slides from my mother's teenage years, the Victorian coin purse my great-grandmother gave me, her note still inside? The only proof that my past really happened is here in this house. Without the memorabilia, even I might forget I was ever a roller-skating preteen in Austin, Texas, or a California hippie graduate student. My eyes might glaze over and I might begin to believe I have never been anything but a mother of two in a big house, watching the clock and wondering where the little one's ballet clothes are.
WHERE ARE THE PURPLE SOCKS?
When the past begins to infiltrate the present, though, it's dangerous-- there is more past than present, and more every minute. Tidbits from the past filter to the surface and impede the flow of time in a forward direction. Today when I wanted to put on earrings I first had to tug a filmy piece of purple rayon off the pair I wanted, and I had to waste time thinking, "This is a purple sock belonging to the toy incarnation of Donny Osmond, circa 1976. Yes, I remember watching 'The Donny and Marie Show' and doing somersaults around the living room with my brother, and those were good times, and I'm sort of glad I saved the Donny and Marie playset, and I'm sort of glad I let the kids play with it, although I wish I could use this brain power to reflect on the Elizabeth Gaskell biography I'm reading -- not to mention to get myself dressed on time -- instead of worrying that I'm forgetting the past or failing to find the interesting kernel in it by not making hay out of the whole Donny and Marie thing."
What kind of archive would set the mind at rest? Wouldn't it be great to have a closet full of industrial-strength storage boxes, stacked and labeled in bland, unemotional codes like the materials in a library vault? Reminiscing would require white cotton gloves and a blank table, and could only go on until dinner time, when the box would be have to be repacked and returned to a high shelf.
My own TV and Russian literature-inflected past -- indeed, my whole family's past (the distant daguerreotype past, and the recent baby-photo past) -- is just the tip of the iceberg, of course. There is history to be reckoned with. There is an infinite wealth of times past I don't even know about yet -- my memory can't be jogged, but must be stocked. If I'm not tripping over my old toe shoes on the stairs, I can be watching time pass on a bigger scale, welcoming past time into the memory banks, which are airy and full of room.
Did I mention that I'm writing a historical novel?
At first glance it would seem that a mess is a problem related to space, but upon closer inspection it turns out that the real issue is time. The books are straightforward -- even books read in the past are timeless -- but scratch the surface and there are time bombs and worm holes of every description lurking in the piles. The high-school yearbooks are expected, and the photo albums, and the baby books (Poppy's, Effie's, and mine). The college papers have been filed neatly away, at least, and the decades of journals line up in an aesthetically pleasing manner, but what about the rest of the stuff -- the old letters, the notebooks full of miscellany, the postcards from every museum in Europe? Then it gets tough -- what about the unfinished poems, the dead novels, the aborted dissertation in its own accordion file, the fan I slept with every night as a child, the carousel of slides from my mother's teenage years, the Victorian coin purse my great-grandmother gave me, her note still inside? The only proof that my past really happened is here in this house. Without the memorabilia, even I might forget I was ever a roller-skating preteen in Austin, Texas, or a California hippie graduate student. My eyes might glaze over and I might begin to believe I have never been anything but a mother of two in a big house, watching the clock and wondering where the little one's ballet clothes are.
WHERE ARE THE PURPLE SOCKS?
When the past begins to infiltrate the present, though, it's dangerous-- there is more past than present, and more every minute. Tidbits from the past filter to the surface and impede the flow of time in a forward direction. Today when I wanted to put on earrings I first had to tug a filmy piece of purple rayon off the pair I wanted, and I had to waste time thinking, "This is a purple sock belonging to the toy incarnation of Donny Osmond, circa 1976. Yes, I remember watching 'The Donny and Marie Show' and doing somersaults around the living room with my brother, and those were good times, and I'm sort of glad I saved the Donny and Marie playset, and I'm sort of glad I let the kids play with it, although I wish I could use this brain power to reflect on the Elizabeth Gaskell biography I'm reading -- not to mention to get myself dressed on time -- instead of worrying that I'm forgetting the past or failing to find the interesting kernel in it by not making hay out of the whole Donny and Marie thing."
What kind of archive would set the mind at rest? Wouldn't it be great to have a closet full of industrial-strength storage boxes, stacked and labeled in bland, unemotional codes like the materials in a library vault? Reminiscing would require white cotton gloves and a blank table, and could only go on until dinner time, when the box would be have to be repacked and returned to a high shelf.
My own TV and Russian literature-inflected past -- indeed, my whole family's past (the distant daguerreotype past, and the recent baby-photo past) -- is just the tip of the iceberg, of course. There is history to be reckoned with. There is an infinite wealth of times past I don't even know about yet -- my memory can't be jogged, but must be stocked. If I'm not tripping over my old toe shoes on the stairs, I can be watching time pass on a bigger scale, welcoming past time into the memory banks, which are airy and full of room.
Did I mention that I'm writing a historical novel?
AFTER
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