Uh .. . . I don’t want to do that again soon

I just spent two hours with about six boxes of crap looking for a letter from the Canada Council for some additional material for another application and found some weird weird stuff. I found of all things my application for commitment to an institution. That was like, ugh, so many ugly energies attached to one tiny piece of paper. I found a letter from an old/new cute girl that is nearly a decade old. I found Miranda July’s invitation to her Miss Moviola chain letter video art thingy she did way back. I found Stephen Kent Jusick’s address in New York, I was probably supposed to send him something and didn’t. Good thing I have distributors. I found grad school applications, along with essays on Cindy Sherman and Madchen in Uniform. I found a small reproduction of Les Sabines that made me cry at the Louvre. I found some crazy writings, I mean, high mania crazy writings. I found a photo of an old high school friend and some short stories I wrote when I was a teenager. I found a manual for a video switcher circa 1985 that we used to use at Emily Carr in 2nd yr Video. I found some faxes from Oberhausen and a few congratulatory letters for scholarships and so on.

You know what I was thinking though, I mean, some of it’s interesting in some sentimental kind of a way, but most of that shit is really, just shit! Most of it doesn’t mean anything. I know for a fact I still have the fuck off letter my best friend in high school wrote me. I still have the fuck off break up letter my first girlfriend gave me too. In fact, I bet I even still have the break up email I got from another ex archived in my inbox!!! Why do I save mean things? And most of my love letters are all in emails.

I think I will save some of it. But there is definitely stuff I don’t need around, like bills from 1998. Or grant applications that were printed out in 2000.

I don’t know what to do about the stuff from when I had my psychosis. It seems kind of weird to keep it around. I might burn it. I have some friends who go to Burning Man every year, maybe I should try and go this summer and just throw all my crazy stuff on it and let it the fuck go. Actually, thats a really good idea, I think I’ll look into that. Maybe my cuz Deanna will want to come with me to Burning Man.

The nice thing about looking at all that stuff was to realize its all in the past. Stuff changes. I don’t feel like its me, it’s mostly just detritus.