For a couple of weeks now I’m busy cleaning the house. I started with the basement, which had accumulated a lot of stuff since Alison moved here and even more when I moved in with her. But then I moved up to my office that basically hadn’t been cleaned up in five years. Yes, I know, I’m a slob.
Anyway I threw away many things and brought a couple of car loads of basement crap to the EcoCentre and stuff that was still useful to Le Chaînon.
I also sold three old computers and cables, drives, etc. on Craigslist and Kijiji for a couple of dollars. A Mac I bought 6 years ago for $6000 made me a whopping $40. I hope the new owner will get some use out of it.
It was easy though to part from it since I never used it anymore. I brought it over from the Netherlands to work on a project that required Mac OS 9, but that project is now finished so the computer could go.
But now I’m nearing the finish line and the decisions are getting tougher. What to do with a box full of love letters of past girlfriends? This dates from way back when, when people wrote postcards and real letters instead of e-mail. I only have a couple of postcards from Alison, but I received a ton of e-mails from her. Don’t worry, I’ll keep those, actually I keep all my e-mail.
But I digress. What to do? On one hand it is extremely unlikely I will read them all again, but on the other hand doing so will be a blast from the past, and will certainly bring back —sweet and bittersweet— memories just like photos from that era. Why can I keep the photos and not the letters? What would you do?
I also ‘found’ a box of letters from my father. I glanced through them and found a poem in French he wrote for me. Reading it made me almost cry. It was written when both he and I were in bad break-ups. Here it is, verbatim.
Tu es mon fils aîmé,
du très bon marque Mark.
Moi : seulement ton père,
plutôt ton frère aîné,
qui t’ai fait tant d’misères.
Mais comme au ciel un arc
se lève (fin d’orage)
je te donne en gage
mes intentions (“sous sage”)
de rendre heureuse ta mère,
Marguerite ma chère femme,
de nous deux belle flamme.
Tu m’aideras? “Si, si !”
Merci ! Ton faible père,
qui pour finir la chasse
t’embrasse.
Jul 23 2008
Mail
For a couple of weeks now I’m busy cleaning the house. I started with the basement, which had accumulated a lot of stuff since Alison moved here and even more when I moved in with her. But then I moved up to my office that basically hadn’t been cleaned up in five years. Yes, I know, I’m a slob.
Anyway I threw away many things and brought a couple of car loads of basement crap to the EcoCentre and stuff that was still useful to Le Chaînon.
I also sold three old computers and cables, drives, etc. on Craigslist and Kijiji for a couple of dollars. A Mac I bought 6 years ago for $6000 made me a whopping $40. I hope the new owner will get some use out of it.
It was easy though to part from it since I never used it anymore. I brought it over from the Netherlands to work on a project that required Mac OS 9, but that project is now finished so the computer could go.
But now I’m nearing the finish line and the decisions are getting tougher. What to do with a box full of love letters of past girlfriends? This dates from way back when, when people wrote postcards and real letters instead of e-mail. I only have a couple of postcards from Alison, but I received a ton of e-mails from her. Don’t worry, I’ll keep those, actually I keep all my e-mail.
But I digress. What to do? On one hand it is extremely unlikely I will read them all again, but on the other hand doing so will be a blast from the past, and will certainly bring back —sweet and bittersweet— memories just like photos from that era. Why can I keep the photos and not the letters? What would you do?
I also ‘found’ a box of letters from my father. I glanced through them and found a poem in French he wrote for me. Reading it made me almost cry. It was written when both he and I were in bad break-ups. Here it is, verbatim.
That box stays.
By mare • art, english, home, montréal •