Life - Move

Life - Move

Posted to Facebook:

Well I believe the cat is officially out of the bag...I have news for those whom care: I got accepted into a design school in Vancouver, which startlingly begins July 1st. All month I've been hurriedly packing up 8 years of my life in Edmonton and preparing for the move. I leave Edmonton this Saturday and I won't be back for probably at least the two years that my program is.

I have a little time the rest of this week if people want to grab a coffee, catch up or otherwise, but I'm rapidly running out of time. Thanks everyone, and I am sure I'll see my friends down the winding road of life.

Actual Post Follows:
There's something to the action of moving that forces us to clearly evaluate everything material in our lives.  I've been wanting for quite some time to pare down my life and get rid of things, I haven't been buying dvds or physical books much in the last two years...I hesitate to buy too many electronics, too many material little things that give fleeting pleasure.

But it's not until you're forced to take all those things and begin to comparmentalize, categorically fill boxes with them, that you realize you even have all this...STUFF.  I mean cds, trinkets, small valuable things, pieces of memories and stories.  I love to get show gifts, small useless pieces of wood or stone and remember the stories behind them.  I have a collection of painted rocks, my friends bring me shot glasses and keychains from their travels, I keep them all.  My tactile memory of objects is excellent, and I can instantly recall almost every story associated with these pieces of lore in my own history very easily.

But do I need them to live?  Well not really.  I certainly don't reminisce with them every day, ongoing in my own memories.  But there's a loving sense to each piece for me, they are the only records anymore of highly transient memories in my life in theatre.

I have boxes of cards, programs and ticket stubs.  They are show memories, but more importantly, people memories.

I've been forced during this move to pick and choose the things I think I'll want to remember five years down the road, and recycle the rest.  It's really hard.  It's really, really hard to do.

I wonder if when other people move, they have the same sort of kinetic-tactile memories I do when they look over cards, small pieces of glass or the stones I've given.  I wonder how others remember people, remember moments, hold on to memories.

Or do they end up recycled or trashed somewhere, for so many of the trinkets of our lives have such short significance.