in my hands

oh yeah, and the packing's already begun.

actually, it's more at the "this is what i can throw out/donate/sell" phase, mostly since i'm not really packing much to take with me until right before i go (because i'm only taking the vitals, after all -- no room for much else). so far i've gone through my cds and dvds (sold $97 worth, still waiting to sell a few more, donating and tossing the rest); my books and magazines (selling or donating all the books, recycling all the magazines); my guitar & amp and two nondigital cameras (pawning); my extra sheets and towels (donating); and my clothes (donating). just the little things to start. in a week or two, i start trying to sell off the bigger things - computer, stereo, turntable & speakers, the dehumidifier i've nicknamed "the beast" - and tearing down the shitty furniture that i'm gonna trash. (this is basically limited to my computer desk, which has a keyboard drawer you can't pull out more than a few inches, and a bookshelf that has the bottom panel attached backwards and upside down. i put both of them together myself, by hand. i should never be allowed to assemble any sort of furniture unit.)

where i started was my magazine collection. sweet fucking jesus, how the hell did i ever amass so many magazines!? where did this madness come from? i can only blame it on my insatiable appetite for magazines, since i thrive on absorbing as many journalistic styles as possible, but this was out of control. i managed to make five large bundles of mags (90% music magazines of many and varied titles, though the other 10% was fitness magazines and back issues of cosmo) to go out for recycling tomorrow, although i had to take the time first to go through all the issues of chart i'd collected over the years, in order to tear out any of my articles and/or reviews for my portfolio.

and man. man oh man, the memories. it was a weird thing, going through all these old back issues from the last four years, detaching the printed pages with my work published on it. it was a lot of pride but a lot of nostalgia and melancholy as well. all i'd ever wanted here was to be a music journalist, after all. and i'd achieved that, but somehow, it hasn't been enough. at least, not at this point, or this level.

(i have to note here that you really should not be listening to editors' infinitely yet gloriously depressing/appropriate album an end has a start while doing this sort of thing, or else you'll just start crying and feeling like a fucking loser)

then my mind changed track, and i sat there flipping pages of chart, and blender, and spin, and rolling stone, and thinking, fuck. wow. how many of these people in the ads and reviews and interviews do i know now? how many have i worked with or for? how many have i talked to over the phone or e-mail? how many have i interviewed? how many do i call friends? how many have i gotten drunk with on a semi-regular basis?

how many of them know who i am, not just vice versa?

at that point, the only thing i could think of was my stepsister, saying to me with a laugh one night in the summer of 2002, "you're just determined to have them know your name, aren't you?"

and i realized that yeah. that was the point all along.

(also? do not listen to the tea party's song "heaven coming down" while going through every single card your father sent you over the last five years. seriously, my father would send me cards for pretty much any occasion - easter, halloween, valentine's day, passing another year in university, if a boy dumped me and i was heartbroken, if he was just thinking about me - and he still does send me cards, and i will always keep every one)

so, in conclusion, it's all already begun, and i can't go fast enough. pare down to the bare essentials, toss the rest, pack the necessary shit up and run. in the meantime, my friends have been asking me if this is "about a boy" -- my friends know me well. however, this time i can at least truthfully groan and roll my eyes and say no, for once i'm doing a life change for myself. i'm past the point where my dedication to them - any of them - dictates what choices i make with my life, even though they were the reason i came here to toronto in the first place. but that was then and this is now.

(although i'll admit i do still keep that photograph in my dresser drawer, hidden from the world. he'd laugh if he knew.)

into the great wide open.

[ music | kill hannah, "lips like morphine" ]