Cleanliness is Next to Godliness…and Juliet Binochet
This weekend I undertook a Feat, an old school, Greco-Roman (or Celtic, if you’re reading this, Dad), land-a-20 Feat with a capital “f” and a silent “epic”. Mortals call it “spring cleaning,” but I was playing god. This weekend, I realigned the spine of my life.
Everything turned over, cleaned, inspected, weighed, evaluated, commented, fixed, sewn, planted, budgeted, clothed, shod, rearranged, refreshed, restocked, renewed…by Monday morning.
Everything…except for my papers. Squeezed into three over-stuffed NPR tote bags, my “papers” (vague..) have left a stain on the order of my lair. I’m addressing that, even as I type this, but it’s a slow process. There are so many (hilarious) hidden gems in my notes and margins. Doodles literal, descriptive, figurative. Frustrated asides. Over-enthusiastic travel plans. Half-started letters. Postcards. Life goals sketched out last summer. Math. Nonsensical flotsam from past jobs and conferences. I keep these things exactly for a moment like this, where I can sit on the floor of my room and sift through myself, experiencing at once an intimacy (my words, my hand, my state of mind) and distance (all past tense, disconnected, gone) that is palpable.
I thought it would be interesting to share the more…interesting fair. We’ll start with a mind-boggling aside (whose context TOTALLY escapes me…) and see where we go from there.
[EDIT: 10:53 a.m. I have compiled the following view of a random selection of scraps. Bonus points if you can identify my lens cap. Pat on the head if you find the scissors.]
1. Doodle of buses with Swedish vocab drawn while waiting for the metro at Roslyn station (DC). (Bilar = cars.)
2. A BookFace Man. No explanation.
3. The script for a Birthday Party Safari tour of the National Zoo.
4. Birthday cards. The first one shows a man wiggling his hips. (Scandalous!)
5. A bio pic of Mike Musgrove of the Washington Post. The text reads, “The @Play column will return next week.”
6. “You’re In The Top 15 Baby!” a hilarious little poem-in-book-form a friend passed on to me (and many strangers) for Valentines Day 2009. (From Wesleyan.)
7. A St. Patrick’s card I made for my Dad — it’s your day, Pop! — some time last fall and forgot about. Whoops.
8. Random magazine clipping of a woman on a beach.
9. Discarded logo for a discarded blog category from the planning stages of NPR In Other Words.
10.Superman comic ripoff, shows the Man of Steel as Clark Kent talking about free press and then freaking out about a fireball.
11.Karl’s notes about attraction, probably recorded in research following a Radio Lab listening session. (Strange, since we didn’t catch that episode together.) Favorite line, “Vasopressin: during sexual activity, initiates and supports patterns of activity that support violence towards other men.”
12. Interpretations of people I interacted with on the metro between Chinatown and Woodley Park one evening.
Categories: Look, Muse
