paisleypiper's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- warehouses and life Warehouses This morning Quinn and I were becoming overwhelmed with the week ahead of each of us. Quinn has a presentation to make on Wednesday to a contentious crew of student services professionals (I use the term loosely) for a newly reorganized academic department. No one on campus knows more about the computer system Quinn works with, because it is elusive and mysterious. A bit like a trickster deity, it wears a patch and in the parallel D-land world we inhabit I would like to suggest it answers to Loki. Many years ago, when I worked in the same department as Quinn, I used to work with program, so I know. The man who wrote the program is so renown that people call him by his first name and he has T-shirts. Entire conventions are held in Ohio and people go there, wearing their T-shirts. I was so intrigued by the subculture that I too wanted a T-shirt. But alas, not only am I well aware that I cannot always obtain what I desire but also, I don�t want to run off with Quinn�s thunder. But anyway, Quinn will do a great job because she has a fourteen-year �relationship� with the program. My week is going to test my stamina
Before I return myself to a state of impending anxiety,� Quinn and I sat on the couch thinking of everything we needed to accomplish � on the detail level, which helps Quinn. And I drank my coffee, uncertain how I felt about the list because my things are all so big and vague and have so many steps before closure�.. It occurred to me, what else is there to do but to go for a walk in a cemetery? This notion appealed to Quinn, who thought it would be healthy to get out for a walk on this perfect fall day. Considering that Saturday�s perfect fall day went unobserved due to the binder project, there was something happy about taking camera in hand and setting out in the new mobile for a big, old cemetery. State City is falling down, so this particular cemetery, although it is �historical� is incredibly run down. Somehow, when it comes to cemeteries, run down adds atmosphere. We parked in the neighborhood that surrounds the cemetery and walked around for a while. I admire the way new townhouses exist in this area with the older houses. The area is hilly and looks a bit like Provincetown in its architectural style of building but minus the outrageousness and coolness, minus the ocean, minus the really wonderful feeling of walking down Commercial Street or roaming on the beach. But as I stated earlier, I am well aware that �.. I love old cemeteries for their sense of peace and the quiet way they remind me of all of the clich�s I have concluded from life and about life. The silent chant of mortality coupled with a sense of wonderment over the intriguing ways those who lived here before me commemorated the passing of their loved ones in marble and cement, fills me with awe. Beth and I have had, for years, quite a photographic exchange over tombstones. When I lived in Boston, on several occasions, we visited cemeteries on Saturdays, made rubbings of the headstones, went back to Beth�s house, ate grilled brie and tomato sandwiches, drank a bottle of wine, and invariably found ourselves discussing of the complications of living. Beth�s parents (my step-grandparents) both died tragically and suddenly in a car accident while on vacation when Beth was 27. I sometimes felt uncomfortable when she talked about it, because I was young, and part of being young is feeling this pressure to respond correctly. Although I knew I had no response and could not really say anything, so I just let her talk. Which, looking back, I think was the right thing. Sometimes people just want to talk because it takes decades to fully process something like that and it is not anything anyone �gets over.� In my family, no one goes on vacation with a disagreement in the air. Well, we would never really disagree because we are far too �civilized.� But some sort of peace is always made before vacations. So, with vacations come visits to new cemeteries, and more photographs. Beth vacations a lot and sends me not photographs of herself standing in front of monuments, but typically photographs of her friends standing or sitting in the sun and photographs of headstones. Over the years, I have learned how to interpret the subtleties of her vacations based on the headstones she selects. In turn, I am making her a book of my headstone photographs. I have been collecting them for a few years now. Today, I captured quite a few images of plastic flowers left at graves from the nineteenth century � the names barely legible � but whoever recently visited the site left the price tags on each of the �bouquets.� And I also took pictures of the way the city is growing up and around the graveyard. Such a contrast, I thought rather sophomorically, between life and death. The cemetery gracefully descends a hill that makes me feel as though the entire cemetery is slipping away. And I like to approach it from the top of the hill, making my way down the slope. I looked out towards the east and noticed an old warehouse about a block away, on the other side of giant chain-link fence. Seeing this juxtaposition made me think about cemeteries as places where we keep the dead because life and death are our greatest mysteries. Do we need to provide a reference point for what comes next? Is the body sacred without the soul? Are our bodies and our souls as easily divided as we think? I have yet to figure out how to know life or death without a metaphor or some other philosophical construct. And even those are not mine or rely on beliefs I do not know I share. Or maybe, beliefs that I have not yet needed to discover, but will, before long. This afternoon, while I worked on binders, wrote a memo to the Esquire about funding and other conundrums related to my initiative, made and ate dinner�. I kept thinking about life, death and warehouses. We keep our valuables in warehouses. My mother has a friend who is the personal assistant for one of the founding women of the owning class both locally and world wide. This woman has her own warehouse and one of the things my mother�s friend does is move goods between the worlds of the stately condo and the limbo of the warehouse. A place with light pouring in through windows, old statues, vaults, hundreds of sets of china for hundreds of people. Gowns worn more than twice. This type of warehouse is an extreme example. Typically, they are places where we keep material goods and supplies between the phases of their life such as post-production and pre-sale. I also thought about my life and how much of it is spent dealing with stuff both literally and more metaphorically. A giant to-do list is a bit like a warehouse (or a prison) for the waking hours. It takes so much time to keep track of the details, to monitor everything, to not just space out and forget to do something that matters. All the while, I am not doing the things that matter most. I let too much time go by sometimes before I catch up with friends and family, I chose to not do things that are more trouble but in the long run might be meaningful or lead to new opportunities. I keep getting tempted to back out on Quinn�s family�s camp-out instead of just going for a shorter amount of time because that is what I have these days. But I cannot have days where I just warehouse my life and who I am. And I wish I could really believe my days were far too precious for nothing but jumping though hoops. I wish I could believe it in such a way that I lived it instead of only knowing on a theoretical level that it is what I want or should want. Warehouses. Sunday night. Busy week. But, I will make my promise here, that I am going to keep everything in perspective and practice what it seems that everyone is saying these days �take time out for me.� Of course, the media wants me to do this so I will need to buy some more stuff to warehouse. Until tomorrow. 11:18 p.m. - 2002-09-22 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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