65. Listening to podcasts while I clean the garage

I have been meaning for ages to get into the garage and do a thorough sorting-and-culling. And today I started—not through any great resolve, but because I thought I might get into the mood by cleaning out the pantry. The pantry should be easier than the garage, right? 

Wrong. 

I was immediately hit by nostalgia—a gold-leaf vase that was my mother's; lacquer soup bowls, a sake set, tiny condiment dishes from our (second) honeymoon in Japan, lo these 43 years ago; a somewhat chipped set of Limoges china that was my grandmother's. But I also found myself unable to deal with the useful stuff.

What if I made space in the garage and just started moving the pantry objects there? Wouldn't that make it easier to assess keepability? Clear out from the pantry everything but actual food and cooking tools.

Sure, I said hopefully.

And so I waded into the garage. (It's not really that bad—we're not full-on hoarders. But out of sight, out of mind, and somehow more and more stuff manages to get dropped into the "out of sight" void.)  

We have two large sets of shelving, on either side of one half of the garage. We set them up almost fifteen years ago now, when we remodeled. Brand-new house! Spanking-clean garage! And when we moved our stuff back from storage, most everything that wasn't furniture or kitchen gear went straight into the garage. (That includes many, many books, but they're in the other half of the garage. Out of sight!) And there it has sat. 

Some shelves do get fairly frequent visits—the one holding the toolbox, the ones holding camping and backpacking gear, the one with TP, paper towels, and other household items. I pretty well have an idea what's on the left side of the garage. The right side, though? It's a mystery. But a mystery I feel ready to tackle. 

Today, I succeeded in dealing with three whole shelves, of fifteen (on the left, easy side). Huzzah! One held many dozens of rock climbing guides and ski manuals. I culled about two-thirds of those, but am (for now) keeping a few. (Nostalgia.) I'm hoping the owner of the rock gym in town might want the castoffs. Another shelf held some office supplies, some of which I have moved into the (also-needing-attention) "bill-paying room," as we call the little household office. And there were miscellaneous items: a jump rope (huh?), a dSLR sensor cleaner, my father's old Schief protractor set, an old hair dryer, which for now are in a box ready to go... somewhere. Eventually, I envision a run to our local dump, and its resale store. 

In the meantime, I will take photos of anything of sentimental value I see no need to keep but still want to remember. As I did when we cleaned out my mother's house after her death in 2008, keeping some of her things but mostly just taking photos. Maybe I'll finally be able to let go of the things I kept. 

Anyway, I mentioned podcasts above. One was Ezra Klein talking with Patti Smith ⬇︎. The other was First Draft and a conversation with poet Diane Seuss. I thoroughly enjoyed them both, grounded, wise, thoughtful women. 

And for Diane, here's a poem she read. It's fourteen lines, and maybe it counts as one of her sonnets? 

[Here on this edge I have had many diminutive visions.]

Diane Seuss

Here on this edge I have had many diminutive visions. That all at its essence is dove-gray.

Wipe the lipstick off the mouth of anything and there you will find dove-gray. With my

thumb I have smudged away the sky's blue and the water's blue and found, when I kicked it

with my shoe, even the sand at its essence is pelican-gray. I am remembering Eden.

How everything swaggered with color. How the hollyhocks finished each other's sentences.

How I missed predatory animals and worrying about being eaten. How I missed being eaten.

How the ocean and the continent are essentially love on a terrible mission to meet up with itself.

How even with the surface roiling, the depths are calmly nursing away at love. That look the late

nurser gets in its eyes as it sucks: a habitual, complacent peace. How to mother that peace, to wean

it, is a terrible career. And to smudge beauty is to discover ugliness. And to smudge ugliness is to be

knocked back by splendor. How every apple is the poison apple. How rosy the skin. How sweet

the flesh. How to suck the apple's poison is the one true meal, the invocation and the Last

Supper. How stillness nests at the base of wind's spine. How even gravestones buckle and well

with the tides. And coffins are little wayward ships making their way toward love's other shore.