Stuff about things / Things about stuff
This morning I head back to the city to tie up the various loose ends of my life there and, from there, light out on some new adventure. I like to think that this will be more a conscientious tying of loose ends and not a blind put-a-match-to-it unconscientious fusion of loose ends.
Yesterday I went into something of a silent tailspin, right there in the family room, surrounded by the three remaining members of my family, Kristin, Bailey the dog, Jon's girlfriend E-, and Jon's best friend Phil. There were a series of pretty funny stories about Jon, and coming from Phil - who was there - we had little reason to doubt them. Maybe it was the fact that I was returning to the city in the morning - this morning - maybe it was the fact that I had begun to confront the realities of outlaying money and being mobile and NYC-style independent again (i.e. would not only have to function as a healthy human being, but would have to do so in such a way that I could do New York, which demands I believe a slightly different form of physical and mental health), maybe it was the fact that I haven't begun to sort through the majority of Jon's material goods, which still sit in the staging area of the basement. But even with a football game on, even with a fire going in the fireplace, even surrounded with the people who knew Jon best as they remembered the funniest, most lovable aspects of the person he was and is, I was lost to two things I couldn't help but stare at given my position on the smaller couch: a carved dark green sign hung over the French doors that says "There's No Place Like Home" (The Wizard of Oz being one of my mother's 2 favorite movies, and a foundation of her philosophy in general), and a formal portrait of Jon in his Naval dress blues and sailor's cap. Both of these items hung on the wall just to the left of the Christmas tree. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was leave. I suppose that that statement still holds true. For now at least. Moreover, as I stared at those items - and, also, sometimes when I close my eyes in the midst of a cup of coffee or taking a shower or doing something completely else - I saw two photographs in my mind's eye: Jon's room in Fort Collins, and the all-black shotgun. These were photographs I'd seen from Jon's Dell computer, which we've set up in the den upstairs and which contained scores of digital photographs of Jon in his Naval barracks, Jon and E- home for the summer in the backyard, Jon and E- with their gigantor bunny, Rocky Balboa. I took the upsetting and necessary step yesterday afternoon of going through some of these photos. In fact I will need to be brief here now in order to give myself time to get these photos onto a CD before I leave. Suffice to say that these photos have given me a context, a scene, in which I can set the dark action Jon took Saturday morning. It will remain a difficult fact of my life that I wasn't there to see the actual space Jon inhabited. Since I've gone through a few of Jon's things - his box of BB guns, his collection of DVDs - I've noticed in myself, in a very conscious way, a desire to watch what he watched and live where he lived and do what he did in order to know what in those films, and what in that place, and what in that apartment contributed to his mindset and character and heart or lack of heart such that he was finally able to do what he did. What fractions or slivers of information in these things - because we are things to a large extent - what in them went toward accruing into the person he was. Not that Jon, or any of us, could ever be summed up in what we own. There remains and will always remain an additional undefinable element, I dunno, an X factor or whatever, a soul, whatever, which is the remainder and the most important element of a person's make-up. And that can't be contained or described or encapsulated in things. But things - i.e. consumables, goods, DVDs, clothes, vitamin supplements, makes of boot and shoe - I suspect or want to believe that these things taken in sum, in aggregate, might make up a mosaic of Jon that like a puzzle with a huge missing piece reveals the shape if not the color of Jon himself.
There's a lot of work I haven't done in sorting through these things.
Yesterday I went into something of a silent tailspin, right there in the family room, surrounded by the three remaining members of my family, Kristin, Bailey the dog, Jon's girlfriend E-, and Jon's best friend Phil. There were a series of pretty funny stories about Jon, and coming from Phil - who was there - we had little reason to doubt them. Maybe it was the fact that I was returning to the city in the morning - this morning - maybe it was the fact that I had begun to confront the realities of outlaying money and being mobile and NYC-style independent again (i.e. would not only have to function as a healthy human being, but would have to do so in such a way that I could do New York, which demands I believe a slightly different form of physical and mental health), maybe it was the fact that I haven't begun to sort through the majority of Jon's material goods, which still sit in the staging area of the basement. But even with a football game on, even with a fire going in the fireplace, even surrounded with the people who knew Jon best as they remembered the funniest, most lovable aspects of the person he was and is, I was lost to two things I couldn't help but stare at given my position on the smaller couch: a carved dark green sign hung over the French doors that says "There's No Place Like Home" (The Wizard of Oz being one of my mother's 2 favorite movies, and a foundation of her philosophy in general), and a formal portrait of Jon in his Naval dress blues and sailor's cap. Both of these items hung on the wall just to the left of the Christmas tree. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was leave. I suppose that that statement still holds true. For now at least. Moreover, as I stared at those items - and, also, sometimes when I close my eyes in the midst of a cup of coffee or taking a shower or doing something completely else - I saw two photographs in my mind's eye: Jon's room in Fort Collins, and the all-black shotgun. These were photographs I'd seen from Jon's Dell computer, which we've set up in the den upstairs and which contained scores of digital photographs of Jon in his Naval barracks, Jon and E- home for the summer in the backyard, Jon and E- with their gigantor bunny, Rocky Balboa. I took the upsetting and necessary step yesterday afternoon of going through some of these photos. In fact I will need to be brief here now in order to give myself time to get these photos onto a CD before I leave. Suffice to say that these photos have given me a context, a scene, in which I can set the dark action Jon took Saturday morning. It will remain a difficult fact of my life that I wasn't there to see the actual space Jon inhabited. Since I've gone through a few of Jon's things - his box of BB guns, his collection of DVDs - I've noticed in myself, in a very conscious way, a desire to watch what he watched and live where he lived and do what he did in order to know what in those films, and what in that place, and what in that apartment contributed to his mindset and character and heart or lack of heart such that he was finally able to do what he did. What fractions or slivers of information in these things - because we are things to a large extent - what in them went toward accruing into the person he was. Not that Jon, or any of us, could ever be summed up in what we own. There remains and will always remain an additional undefinable element, I dunno, an X factor or whatever, a soul, whatever, which is the remainder and the most important element of a person's make-up. And that can't be contained or described or encapsulated in things. But things - i.e. consumables, goods, DVDs, clothes, vitamin supplements, makes of boot and shoe - I suspect or want to believe that these things taken in sum, in aggregate, might make up a mosaic of Jon that like a puzzle with a huge missing piece reveals the shape if not the color of Jon himself.
There's a lot of work I haven't done in sorting through these things.
posted by Wil at
5:22 AM
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