I like the honesty (and acquired wisdom!) of this piece very much, Max. I am variously surrounded by similar. Recently I was told to hire a college kid to help sort the archive. "They won't get caught up in it. What they can do in an hour will take you ten hours."
Yet, there was this curious question as I raised (emptied) my (92 year old" mother out of her kitchen chair the other evening, "Who will fill this absence."
Her poor son, it appears, will be writing away, capturing those kinds of words as such - when interesting, at least - to fill the 'absence."
Tidy or not!
Stephen V
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote: Tidying myself away
Actuarially, the paper says,
I should live another ten years or so,
my wife a further twenty or thirty.
Therefore it is befitting
I should consider her future
and prepare to … tidy myself away.
No woman wants to come home
from her man’s funeral
to a house empty of him
but chocker with the clutter
of the person just disposed of.
We all know widows choking still
over the old boy’s shoes, hats,
trousers, jackets and coats.
They can’t face meeting them
on some codger kitted-out
at the local op-shop.
Best if I prune my wardrobe now
to some bare necessities.
When at retirement I packed up
my old office, I trashed – well,
as much as I could bear to:
quite a few files, unsorted clippings,
unread publishers’ catalogues.
I called in three book-dealers:
one by one they scanned the shelves,
made their slim selections –
‘most of this stuff’s unsellable –
nothing’s deader than old critics’,
paid me chickenfeed, trundled away.
Browsing in their shops these days,
I’m often drawn to familiar book-spines,
check the prices – unsellable, these too?
So far I’ve held back from rescuing them.
At home in the garage, meanwhile,
stand grim metal cabinets I said I’d sift,
once I’d reconciled to their deadness –
old lecture scripts, ‘research’ ingredients
gathered from afar, never baked.
More unsorted notes and clippings,
from which once I thought to analyse,
anatomise, synthesise
where culture was drifting.
It was me that was drifting.
Have I stopped clipping?
And printing out clues from websites?
I’m not that retired.
In my little office off the garage
the dogs have just enough space to snooze;
the rest – cartons of once necessary
items, yet to be sorted,
like the boxes the op-shop workers find
on Mondays on the pavement.
Classics on cheap paper that long waited
my freedom – Proust, late James
still expecting in fine my late nod.
Tapes of great portent
for superseded tape-players.
Signed copies of books by five decades
of half-talented acquaintances.
My own unsold books.
If a fire swept through here,
what a mercy. But first,
I’d better do some sorting,
trashing. Ideally, all will be dispersed
the day this old body is tidied away.
Max Richards
Doncaster, Victoria
Wednesday 30 July 2008
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