Throwing away clothes

 17 July 2021

When I walked back into my apartment after 14 days away in the woods, I discovered that I missed a very big storm. So big, a LOT of water came into my apartment. I live alone and I'm not so tidy, so I had a big pile of clothing on the floor. That pile of clothes is now compromised, soaked up the flood and got a little moldy. I ended up throwing away 4 garbage bags worth of clothes and towels. Now I'm at my parents house using vinegar and baking soda and the sunlight to try to salvage some of my shirts. My family in Florida told me there's no hope, there's no getting that smell out. The majority of my clothing, just gone now.


And you know it's okay. My parents don't have any clothing from their 30th year. So I was gonna get rid of all of that eventually. And it's so funny that I was just going about my week thinking everything was fine but my little apartment was turned upside down. It's just another day for a Tucsonan too. Like, I'll survive, everyone goes through these kinds of days. And even though I thought I loved those clothes, I'm only feeling a little inconvenienced. I am feeling some grief though too. How much symbolic meaning did I attach to those clothes? 


In some ways it's exciting. Like, how many of us dream of throwing everything away? To break those chains binding us to our material possessions. And Mother Nature will rip our possessions away from us, whether we are attached to them or not.


I was weirdly attached to my "The Smiths" shirt from my junior year of high school. And now I'll never see it again. Love you all

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Baseball is erotic

The sweat rolling down the back, the tight white pants and the pooched out butt, the heart beating against the ribcage, the Oscar Meyer wieners, covered in mustard, going into everyone's mouth. It's a metaphor for sex, and the eroticism is below the surface, it can only be felt, not seen.  The pitcher has extreme focus, like a predator eyeing it's prey. The batter's contorted, like stress on a spring, waiting til the exact moment to burst. A white ball is thrown across the field. The batter has a split second to decide to swing or not, his mind explodes in two different directions, and it's a strike. He has just a moment before he has to raise the bat again and lock in his focus. Takes a few breaths, and then tenses his body up again. Every muscle from the feet to the fingertips to the eyes, contracted and held, and the heartbeats are getting louder.  Another pitch and he doesn't swing, it's a ball. A moment of relief. The back and forth between stress and r...
Read more

Sheep Slaughter

Today was sheep slaughter day. I was pretty nervous, knowing I was going to watch something die. I got hardly any sleep. When I watched the sheep twitch and yank itself around with blood coming out his neck, I was surprisingly calm and quiet. I expected to be disturbed or disgusted, but I wasn't. I definitely felt some big emotions though, it's hard to pinpoint what they were. Solemn, content, religious, poetic perhaps. Maybe it wasn't even an emotion, but an action in my soul. I surrendered to how unfair life is.  "One must eat the other, who runs free before him. While fantasizing the beauty of each movement. A sensation not unlike slapping yourself in the face." -Jane's Addiction  The teachers at this communal farm are lovely, Raye held the front legs down while Shelby straddled the sheep. My classmate Blaine held the back legs down, and my other classmate Billy stirred the blood in a bowl to keep it from clotting. Raye's gonna make blood pudding in the...
Read more

An ode to the gay men of Appalachia

To hike a long hike, you gotta go into town every once in a while to pick up the care package your Mama sent to the post office. Well it's Sunday, and I'm in Front Royal and the post office doesn't open until 8:30 in the morning. Luckily for me, I found a super secret gay man network called Grindr. I can pretty quickly find a place to sleep on Grindr, lots of great men on there, most everyone is happy to help a hiker.  I knew I wouldn't make it to Front Royal in time to pick up my package, so 2 days ago I had to slow down, I got on Grindr back in Luray and a really nice guy came and picked me up. When he texted me he sent pictures of his big house, and said he'd pick me up in a Mercedes-Benz, he talked about his multiple airbnbs and his house-keeper. I mean, I got the impression that he liked showing off his money.  He married a woman, but that ended in divorce because of course it did. And his ex-wife and kids have nothing to do with him. So here he is fairly fresh...
Read more