A Life in Old Boxes

Recently I reacquired boxes filled with artifacts from my younger days, which has left me in a pensive mood. I have found photographs of loved ones who are long gone, letters and postcards from the days when people still mailed correspondence, and my first attempt at a novel, a manuscript which I assumed no longer existed.

And I have found boxes of books, each box a record of an intellectual phase. In one box I found works by Whitman, Ferlinghetti, and Rimbaud. I found Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C.G. Jung and Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame by Charles Bukowski, which I bought in a space that was once the notorious club called the Cellar in Fort Worth. In that same box I also found Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I started reading in South Korea and finished in Yellowstone National Park in 1995.

To be honest, it has been an odd experience to revisit my past, especially considering that I had no intention of doing so. It is as if all of these boxes somehow belong to another person who has lived along the same timeline as me.