Since yesterday was a long, trying day--in fact, this whole month has been something to be quickly and gratefully forgotten--I ate a brief, hastily prepared dinner upon my arrival at La Casa del Terror, watched a little bit of television and, at 8 p.m., gave up on the day and crawed off to bed.
If only the day ended there.
Somebody once said, "No one has more tortured dreams than the creative mind." (That someone may have been me, but I'm certain somebody else has said the very same thing, only more eloquently.) And when I have a lot on my mind--sometimes good, but usually (like yesterday) bad--I tend to have more detailed, intricate or flat-out weird dreams.
Last night (or was it this morning?) fell into that last category.
I don't remember all of it--a dream has to be really vivid or really freaky (or both) for me to retain the whole thing upon awakening--but the jist, as I recall, was this:
I was to attend a memorial reading for Lorri Jackson and compose a poem for the event. (Why I'd need attend--since she's been dead for 17 years--and write a tribute poem when I wrote one back then, I don't know.)
I arrive with JB at what I think is a meeting to discuss the memorial, take a seat on a folding chair in what looks like an American Legion hall and start to write lines in a spiral-bound notebook. (The only fragment I can recall from the verse-in-progress is "cancerous traffic"--which I actually rather like; maybe I'll use in a poem or haiku somewhere down the line.) Then somebody tells me that this isn't a meeting to discuss the memorial--this is the memorial.
Panic is setting in rapidly when a short man wearing a bowling shirt and jeans approaches me, lays his small, soft hands upon my troubled shoulders and urges me calm down and have a seat. I recognize him imediately, even without the "flowing robes" Carl the groundskeeper so eloquently described in Caddyshack, as the Dalai Lama. He directs my attention to the stage, where a Lorri Jackson lookalike is doing a vigorous dance. She's a dead ringer for Lorri, with many colorful tattoos and piercings shining in the stage lights...except she was naked...and had a fully erect dick.
When the Dalai Lama himself takes the stage to say a few kind words, the audience breaks out into an apparently well-rehearsed song-and-dance routine in tribute to him. I don't know the words or moves, so I look at the young man on my left--a blond kid in a crisp white shirt and tie, like the kind you see going door to door on Saturday afternoons, asking you whether or not you've accepted Jesus as your personal savior--and just do what he does, only maybe a beat or two behind.
When the number ends, the Dalai Lama begins to speak...at which point I wake up and vow never, ever to eat turkey chili right before bedtime.
Showing posts with label Lorri Jackson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lorri Jackson. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Monday, October 8, 2007
17 Years Gone
I wrote the following essay about Lorri Jackson several years ago for a webpage dedicated to her memory and managed by her sister, Leann. The page hasn't been updated in ages, so before it vanishes outright, I'm migrating over to my own site, with minor edits. I've also posted the poem that I wrote at the time in a separate entry.
Tuesday is the 17th anniversary of her death. And it still doesn't seem real--or right.
"Pierced nose, combat boots, heart tattoo over left breast, white fishnets, plaid skirt, paint-stained ripped t-shirt, black hair." That was the laundry list I scribbled in my journal the first time I met Lorri Jackson.
It was 1985. We were both busting ass as students in the Creative Writing department at Columbia College. I also worked part-time as a tutor, helping Columbia students with their grammar, punctuation and spelling problems. Lorri had signed up to be tutored for a semester not because she needed help with her writing--Lord knows she didn't--but because she wanted to be a tutor herself and this would be a way for her to see what it was like. And I was to be her example of fine tutorial skill. Yikes.
We didn't get along at first. She didn't need my help and thought our sessions were a waste of time. I thought her personality came across "like ammonia" (another note from my journal), and her fiction was as dark and uncompromising as anything I'd ever read before. But as the weeks passed, we spent more and more of out time just bullshitting about anything that came to mind: music (she liked Black Flag); our childhoods (I was a life-long Chicagoan, she a self-described "army brat"); and, more than anything else, our writing. We were both poets. We both like Baudelaire. And the more we talked about what we were most passionate about, the more we got along. Still, it was usually Lorri who, 90 minutes or so into the session, who'd tap her watch and saying "C'mon, Ed. We gotta get some work done." So we'd go over her prose, I'd ask questions about why certain characters were doing what they were doing the way they were doing it, and she'd do a quick rewrite that maintained the same ti ghtness of language, but expanded the level of detail. Damn, she was good.
By the end of that semester, we were friends--not tight buds who always hung out together, but more a "happy to see you when I see you" kind of thing. We'd squat in the halls, shoot the shit, compare notes, have a laugh. Lorri became a tutor the next semester, and we wound up in our first Advanced Poetry Workshop together.
During that first Workshop together, Lorri and I both had poems published in a local arts magazine called Black & White. We had to go to the editor's apartment in Palmer Square to pick up our complimentary copies, and I was the native who knew the turf, so we hopped on the El together and made our way there. We got 15 copies apiece--presumably to be distributed to friends, family, strangers on the street, etc. Lorri swiped a few extra copies and shared her take with me once we were safely away.
In class, Lorri could be vicious with her criticism or, more often than not, would kick an impatient leather-clad foot while her eyes seared holes in the carpet yarn. If she respected a poet, though, she could be generous and constructive with her criticism. One time, I had written a poem with extremely dense language and excessively long lines. Lorri suggested making the lines shorter, giving readers a chance to rest their eyes while setting them up for the next surprise. With much shorter lines grouped in small stanzas, the poem was much stronger--Lorri was dead-on.
On another occasion, we got into a spirited discussion about the use of the word "feel" in poetry. I'd written a poem that started with the line "Some nights, I feel the need." Lorri argued that since the poem itself was an expression of feeling, actually using the word "feel" was redundant. I got the point and changed the line to "Some nights, I have the need." That alteration changed the whole tone of the poem--it was no longer just about "feeling" an emotion, but about being possessed by it.
After a few more workshops together, JB (my best friend, then and now), Lorri and I were selected by Paul Hoover to help edit the first issue of Columbia Poetry Review. We'd plunder student folders (including our own), pull work that struck our fancies and get together sporadically to narrow down our selections. We had our last "meeting" in the lobby of the Wabash campus in July of 1987, just after we three had graduated from Columbia. Lorri showed up at that last session with a blood-red eye, which she said didn't hurt--just a burst blood vessel--but it looked like hell. She'd been at a party where her then-boyfriend had punched somebody out just to get some attention. They got attention, all right--they got the piss beat out of them, and Lorri got popped in the eye by a "new-wave Frankenstein." Somehow, we go a laugh out of it.
And that's what I remember more than anything else--the laughs and smiles, even when things weren't particularly funny. I didn't know the Lorri Jackson who lived on the dark side. I knew that Lorri existed--how could you read her work and NOT know?--but I never did meet that woman. The Lorri I knew was sweet and funny and generous. I believed, in the typical arrogance of youth, that Lorri, JB and I had the talent to change the face of American poetry. Lorri, though, had the drive to make herself a presence in the poetry scene, like her or not. She did numerous readings all over the city--and, later, around the country as well--often taking the mike off the stand and prowling the stage, pausing to emphasize words or phrases, not letting the audience have the comforting option of tuning her out. I didn't stay in close contact with her after graduation, but I did see her occasionally at readings, and I followed her rising career with--guess what?--a smile.
I won't go into all that was said after she died or the anger and sadness that took hold of me. As I said, my memories of Lorri J. had a lot more to do with having respect for her as a poet and appreciation for her as a friend than they do with the reasons why she isn't here anymore.
One more memory, then, and I'll be on my way:
The last time I saw Lorri was at the reading for the second issue of Columbia Poetry Review, which neither of us edited, but we both had poems in it, so there we were. We didn't really talk, just said "Hi" and exchanged pleasant greetings. After the reading, though, there was a small reception with a nice buffet, and as I made my way up the hall toward it Lorri motored past me, humming like a cropduster with a belly full of pesticide. "C'mon, Ed," she called back over her shoulder, "I'm gonna beat ya!" And she did beat me there. In fact, she kicked my ass.
She always did. And all these years later, she still does.
Tuesday is the 17th anniversary of her death. And it still doesn't seem real--or right.
"Pierced nose, combat boots, heart tattoo over left breast, white fishnets, plaid skirt, paint-stained ripped t-shirt, black hair." That was the laundry list I scribbled in my journal the first time I met Lorri Jackson.
It was 1985. We were both busting ass as students in the Creative Writing department at Columbia College. I also worked part-time as a tutor, helping Columbia students with their grammar, punctuation and spelling problems. Lorri had signed up to be tutored for a semester not because she needed help with her writing--Lord knows she didn't--but because she wanted to be a tutor herself and this would be a way for her to see what it was like. And I was to be her example of fine tutorial skill. Yikes.
We didn't get along at first. She didn't need my help and thought our sessions were a waste of time. I thought her personality came across "like ammonia" (another note from my journal), and her fiction was as dark and uncompromising as anything I'd ever read before. But as the weeks passed, we spent more and more of out time just bullshitting about anything that came to mind: music (she liked Black Flag); our childhoods (I was a life-long Chicagoan, she a self-described "army brat"); and, more than anything else, our writing. We were both poets. We both like Baudelaire. And the more we talked about what we were most passionate about, the more we got along. Still, it was usually Lorri who, 90 minutes or so into the session, who'd tap her watch and saying "C'mon, Ed. We gotta get some work done." So we'd go over her prose, I'd ask questions about why certain characters were doing what they were doing the way they were doing it, and she'd do a quick rewrite that maintained the same ti ghtness of language, but expanded the level of detail. Damn, she was good.
By the end of that semester, we were friends--not tight buds who always hung out together, but more a "happy to see you when I see you" kind of thing. We'd squat in the halls, shoot the shit, compare notes, have a laugh. Lorri became a tutor the next semester, and we wound up in our first Advanced Poetry Workshop together.
During that first Workshop together, Lorri and I both had poems published in a local arts magazine called Black & White. We had to go to the editor's apartment in Palmer Square to pick up our complimentary copies, and I was the native who knew the turf, so we hopped on the El together and made our way there. We got 15 copies apiece--presumably to be distributed to friends, family, strangers on the street, etc. Lorri swiped a few extra copies and shared her take with me once we were safely away.
In class, Lorri could be vicious with her criticism or, more often than not, would kick an impatient leather-clad foot while her eyes seared holes in the carpet yarn. If she respected a poet, though, she could be generous and constructive with her criticism. One time, I had written a poem with extremely dense language and excessively long lines. Lorri suggested making the lines shorter, giving readers a chance to rest their eyes while setting them up for the next surprise. With much shorter lines grouped in small stanzas, the poem was much stronger--Lorri was dead-on.
On another occasion, we got into a spirited discussion about the use of the word "feel" in poetry. I'd written a poem that started with the line "Some nights, I feel the need." Lorri argued that since the poem itself was an expression of feeling, actually using the word "feel" was redundant. I got the point and changed the line to "Some nights, I have the need." That alteration changed the whole tone of the poem--it was no longer just about "feeling" an emotion, but about being possessed by it.
After a few more workshops together, JB (my best friend, then and now), Lorri and I were selected by Paul Hoover to help edit the first issue of Columbia Poetry Review. We'd plunder student folders (including our own), pull work that struck our fancies and get together sporadically to narrow down our selections. We had our last "meeting" in the lobby of the Wabash campus in July of 1987, just after we three had graduated from Columbia. Lorri showed up at that last session with a blood-red eye, which she said didn't hurt--just a burst blood vessel--but it looked like hell. She'd been at a party where her then-boyfriend had punched somebody out just to get some attention. They got attention, all right--they got the piss beat out of them, and Lorri got popped in the eye by a "new-wave Frankenstein." Somehow, we go a laugh out of it.
And that's what I remember more than anything else--the laughs and smiles, even when things weren't particularly funny. I didn't know the Lorri Jackson who lived on the dark side. I knew that Lorri existed--how could you read her work and NOT know?--but I never did meet that woman. The Lorri I knew was sweet and funny and generous. I believed, in the typical arrogance of youth, that Lorri, JB and I had the talent to change the face of American poetry. Lorri, though, had the drive to make herself a presence in the poetry scene, like her or not. She did numerous readings all over the city--and, later, around the country as well--often taking the mike off the stand and prowling the stage, pausing to emphasize words or phrases, not letting the audience have the comforting option of tuning her out. I didn't stay in close contact with her after graduation, but I did see her occasionally at readings, and I followed her rising career with--guess what?--a smile.
I won't go into all that was said after she died or the anger and sadness that took hold of me. As I said, my memories of Lorri J. had a lot more to do with having respect for her as a poet and appreciation for her as a friend than they do with the reasons why she isn't here anymore.
One more memory, then, and I'll be on my way:
The last time I saw Lorri was at the reading for the second issue of Columbia Poetry Review, which neither of us edited, but we both had poems in it, so there we were. We didn't really talk, just said "Hi" and exchanged pleasant greetings. After the reading, though, there was a small reception with a nice buffet, and as I made my way up the hall toward it Lorri motored past me, humming like a cropduster with a belly full of pesticide. "C'mon, Ed," she called back over her shoulder, "I'm gonna beat ya!" And she did beat me there. In fact, she kicked my ass.
She always did. And all these years later, she still does.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
sub/ject
The following poem was written shortly after Lorri Jackson's death in October 1990. It was read months later at a public memorial and was also published in Tommorrow Magazine.
This ain't intended as no fucking
ode to The Dead Junkie Society,
cool versers gone cold, clogged
with mucus, nodded on someone
else's couch with baby powder,
cellophane, tattoos permanent
shirt sleeves down arms not telling
any more war stories penned by
way too many 5 AMs, street brawls
with Nazi skinheads, days and
nights of leather and pervasive
darkness, persuasive horses, cans
of Black Label nursed in back
of Link's Hall, Tony Fitzpatrick
on stage, huge, reading lines
about Roberto Clemente gunning
balls in Wrigley Field out to
a grove of folding chairs on
hardwood, smoking; afternoons
laid out in long beige halls,
classroom doors gouged open for
semi-circle jerks; combat boots,
white fishnet kicking, intolerant
eyes combusting carpet weave,
words attitude ammonia under
noses,under nails conservative,
tapping, impatient with pierced-
nosed punkers swiping mikes from
varnished-to-dead podiums, chrome-
plated stands on barroom poet
combat zones, walking coals, toetip
prowl matching sweet streetcar
howl now flatlined, confined to
fog memory; paste-up scraps of
tripping to Palmer Square to pick up
our contributors' copies of first
published poems in Black & White
Magazine--scissored slices back
between the plasterboard walls
thin enough to pound thoughts in,
fluorescent stretching plates of
higher education escaped from.
No defecation, no deification:
Just surprising simple flicks
where you say you wanna have
kids someday, say you think
white people are scary but that
I'm not and I feel complemented,
say you don't believe I have a
Lorri Jackson "Collection" until
I drop the blue binder dripping
with mimeobooks cranked out on
the office copier, pass-around
pages, a piece for sweater torn
off in class and named "Henry,"
into your hands and you smile,
flip, sign inside: "OK Edwardian
I believe you. Lorri J." And in
October, when I hadn't seen you
since you told the audience at
Columbia about the poem about
the woman you said you terrorized
just because you walked in
on her giving your boyfriend--
"Excuse me, ex-boyfriend"--head,
I clipped your obituary from
The Louisville Courier-Journal
into the blue binder at the end
and it was the very last thing I
ever wanted to add God damn you.
This ain't intended as no fucking
ode to The Dead Junkie Society,
cool versers gone cold, clogged
with mucus, nodded on someone
else's couch with baby powder,
cellophane, tattoos permanent
shirt sleeves down arms not telling
any more war stories penned by
way too many 5 AMs, street brawls
with Nazi skinheads, days and
nights of leather and pervasive
darkness, persuasive horses, cans
of Black Label nursed in back
of Link's Hall, Tony Fitzpatrick
on stage, huge, reading lines
about Roberto Clemente gunning
balls in Wrigley Field out to
a grove of folding chairs on
hardwood, smoking; afternoons
laid out in long beige halls,
classroom doors gouged open for
semi-circle jerks; combat boots,
white fishnet kicking, intolerant
eyes combusting carpet weave,
words attitude ammonia under
noses,under nails conservative,
tapping, impatient with pierced-
nosed punkers swiping mikes from
varnished-to-dead podiums, chrome-
plated stands on barroom poet
combat zones, walking coals, toetip
prowl matching sweet streetcar
howl now flatlined, confined to
fog memory; paste-up scraps of
tripping to Palmer Square to pick up
our contributors' copies of first
published poems in Black & White
Magazine--scissored slices back
between the plasterboard walls
thin enough to pound thoughts in,
fluorescent stretching plates of
higher education escaped from.
No defecation, no deification:
Just surprising simple flicks
where you say you wanna have
kids someday, say you think
white people are scary but that
I'm not and I feel complemented,
say you don't believe I have a
Lorri Jackson "Collection" until
I drop the blue binder dripping
with mimeobooks cranked out on
the office copier, pass-around
pages, a piece for sweater torn
off in class and named "Henry,"
into your hands and you smile,
flip, sign inside: "OK Edwardian
I believe you. Lorri J." And in
October, when I hadn't seen you
since you told the audience at
Columbia about the poem about
the woman you said you terrorized
just because you walked in
on her giving your boyfriend--
"Excuse me, ex-boyfriend"--head,
I clipped your obituary from
The Louisville Courier-Journal
into the blue binder at the end
and it was the very last thing I
ever wanted to add God damn you.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
The Move, Part Two: Ghosts Never Die
A long time ago--seems like another lifetime now--I wrote a short story
about a young woman who came back to her hometown, Chicago, for the holiday
season and experienced the usual arguments and angst that usually accompany
such events (in most fiction, movies an sitcoms, at least, if not in what
passes for reality these days).
At the time, the story, entitled "Ghosts Never Die" (because they're already deadÑhey, it sounded clever and profound then) seemed like it would be a pretty good starting point for a novel that, of course, never got written. (I've only written one novel, and that was back in high school. No, you can't read it; given my sloppy handwriting, then and now, neither can I.)
In the novel-that-was-only-in-my-head, the protagonist, Kelly Waterhouse, is, at one point, walking with an old friend across their childhood playground at night as Kelly laments that past events in her life won't leave her alone. The friend replies, "Look up and tell me what you see." Kelly does so, but all she can see are what few stars are visible through the pollution and streetlight haze that hang over the city like the glass dome of a snowglobe that hasn't been dusted in ages. "No," her friend explains. "Those are the ghosts of how those stars looked a hundred years ago, more or less. One of those babies could go supernova this exact moment, but we wouldn't find about it for another century or so."
"Your point?" Kelly asks.
"The past is all around you. Over your head. Under your feet. In your hair. Everywhere. It's never going to just go away. You have a choice of dealing with it, or letting it deal with you."
I thought about this idea as I hauled boxes and bags and crates from my old apartment to my new one. It's been said that disturbing a grave can raise the vengeful spirits of the dead. I assume the concept applies to the upheaval inherent in a move as well. In the process of packing and unpacking, you find things you didn't even know you had, artifacts of past phases of life, mementos of those no longer in your life, reminders of happier or sadder times.
Here are just a few of the things I ran across while moving:
A GE portable radio that I don't remember owning (it's much nicer than one I'd buy for myself).
A small, square pillow Mom made for me from an old black coat when I was ten.
A large teddy bear I rescued from the foundation of a building that had been demolished.
A plaid metal lunchbox given to me for my birthday by Red Secretary.
Unfiled photos of Lottie.
Bits of stone excavated from the remains of Riverview Park.
A poster for the movie version of Tank Girl.
The laminated holy card from my father's wake.
A terra cotta leopard.
A framed AIDSwalk poster.
My collection of Lorri Jackson poetry. (Has she really been dead almost 16 years? Damn. Time flies, whether you're having fun or not.)
One Wiener Whistle.
Two decks of tarot cards.
Three life-size plastic skulls.
A gunmetal-colored picture frame that used to hold the picture of a woman I loved, sitting on a couch with three other friends I no longer hear from.
The small, lighted, plastic pine tree that my grandmother put in her living room window every Christmas--the same tree that will sit in my living room window this Christmas.
An Eliza Dushku action figure I bought in Dallas.
The same copy of Ulysses that everybody seems to have, but no one has actually read.
My first camera--a boxy little Kodak that takes film that's no longer manufactured.
A pair of sunglasses that look like something out of The Blues Brothers.
A large booklet of 78s that also holds the death announcements for my godmother and uncle.
The head of a wooden bird toy Mom played with as a child.
Porn tapes I'd misplaced.
A clock depicting the Last Supper that plays the Hallelujah Chorus at the top of the hour, "won" at a Christmas in July party in Dayton.
A small carboard horn with Captain Marvel on the side.
Half a dozen pairs of cowboy boots.
A rubber shark I've had since the original Jaws came out.
Three Cindy Crawford calendars and two Heather Thomas calendars kept safe in a WGN portfolio.
A Star Trek communicator.
More action figures and model kits than I could ever display, even if my new apartment were the size of Graceland.
And much, much more.
Each object evoked at least one specific memory, if not a torrent of them. Sometimes, I smiled. Sometimes, I winced. Sometimes, the object in question didn't make the trip to the new apartment, though usually it did. Sometimes, knowing what was in the boxes--the (re)discoveries made, the pleasures and acquaintances renewed--made carrying them that much easier. Sometimes, it made them weigh twice as much.
I guess that's what happens when you live in one place for so long. The memories themselves, whether good, bad, ecstatic or somber, can weigh more than the furniture. And the ghosts? You may not be able to kill a ghost, but you can, at least, give it a polite nod and move on.
At the time, the story, entitled "Ghosts Never Die" (because they're already deadÑhey, it sounded clever and profound then) seemed like it would be a pretty good starting point for a novel that, of course, never got written. (I've only written one novel, and that was back in high school. No, you can't read it; given my sloppy handwriting, then and now, neither can I.)
In the novel-that-was-only-in-my-head, the protagonist, Kelly Waterhouse, is, at one point, walking with an old friend across their childhood playground at night as Kelly laments that past events in her life won't leave her alone. The friend replies, "Look up and tell me what you see." Kelly does so, but all she can see are what few stars are visible through the pollution and streetlight haze that hang over the city like the glass dome of a snowglobe that hasn't been dusted in ages. "No," her friend explains. "Those are the ghosts of how those stars looked a hundred years ago, more or less. One of those babies could go supernova this exact moment, but we wouldn't find about it for another century or so."
"Your point?" Kelly asks.
"The past is all around you. Over your head. Under your feet. In your hair. Everywhere. It's never going to just go away. You have a choice of dealing with it, or letting it deal with you."
I thought about this idea as I hauled boxes and bags and crates from my old apartment to my new one. It's been said that disturbing a grave can raise the vengeful spirits of the dead. I assume the concept applies to the upheaval inherent in a move as well. In the process of packing and unpacking, you find things you didn't even know you had, artifacts of past phases of life, mementos of those no longer in your life, reminders of happier or sadder times.
Here are just a few of the things I ran across while moving:
A GE portable radio that I don't remember owning (it's much nicer than one I'd buy for myself).
A small, square pillow Mom made for me from an old black coat when I was ten.
A large teddy bear I rescued from the foundation of a building that had been demolished.
A plaid metal lunchbox given to me for my birthday by Red Secretary.
Unfiled photos of Lottie.
Bits of stone excavated from the remains of Riverview Park.
A poster for the movie version of Tank Girl.
The laminated holy card from my father's wake.
A terra cotta leopard.
A framed AIDSwalk poster.
My collection of Lorri Jackson poetry. (Has she really been dead almost 16 years? Damn. Time flies, whether you're having fun or not.)
One Wiener Whistle.
Two decks of tarot cards.
Three life-size plastic skulls.
A gunmetal-colored picture frame that used to hold the picture of a woman I loved, sitting on a couch with three other friends I no longer hear from.
The small, lighted, plastic pine tree that my grandmother put in her living room window every Christmas--the same tree that will sit in my living room window this Christmas.
An Eliza Dushku action figure I bought in Dallas.
The same copy of Ulysses that everybody seems to have, but no one has actually read.
My first camera--a boxy little Kodak that takes film that's no longer manufactured.
A pair of sunglasses that look like something out of The Blues Brothers.
A large booklet of 78s that also holds the death announcements for my godmother and uncle.
The head of a wooden bird toy Mom played with as a child.
Porn tapes I'd misplaced.
A clock depicting the Last Supper that plays the Hallelujah Chorus at the top of the hour, "won" at a Christmas in July party in Dayton.
A small carboard horn with Captain Marvel on the side.
Half a dozen pairs of cowboy boots.
A rubber shark I've had since the original Jaws came out.
Three Cindy Crawford calendars and two Heather Thomas calendars kept safe in a WGN portfolio.
A Star Trek communicator.
More action figures and model kits than I could ever display, even if my new apartment were the size of Graceland.
And much, much more.
Each object evoked at least one specific memory, if not a torrent of them. Sometimes, I smiled. Sometimes, I winced. Sometimes, the object in question didn't make the trip to the new apartment, though usually it did. Sometimes, knowing what was in the boxes--the (re)discoveries made, the pleasures and acquaintances renewed--made carrying them that much easier. Sometimes, it made them weigh twice as much.
I guess that's what happens when you live in one place for so long. The memories themselves, whether good, bad, ecstatic or somber, can weigh more than the furniture. And the ghosts? You may not be able to kill a ghost, but you can, at least, give it a polite nod and move on.
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