I am a hoarder of the past. And I cannot find my front door.
How many times have I read my retread diary? Notes. Hen scratch. Stacks of letters. Old mail. Cards. Post-its, even. Those small yellow squares always hold the largest of all the worst ideas.
Soulful, remorseful reflections? I have a mountain of them. Half-finished contemplations? Enough to fill a depthless canyon. Pleading, repeating, never-ending sentences rear-ending grill to bumper heavy-breaking sentences, I have made that commute. Tedious, tiresome monotonous, and wearisome? Hell, yes. If you’re free for a millennium, I can read them to you. Then I will start over.
Mud, muck, stuck in neutral. Let me look in the endless rearview. Again.
I should have been a better friend, father, and lover. Husband and friend. The phone weighed a hundred pounds in my hand twenty years ago. It’s about the same today. So, really, what has changed except the technology? Maybe that is the point. Nothing has changed, and perhaps I like it that way.
This is what I am. Flawed.
I should have taken that job in Anchorage or maybe in Timbuktu. Where is Timbuktu except scrawled on the back of an envelope under a stack of other envelopes, with random names and phone numbers—tombstones, really, at the bottom of a banker’s box. Perhaps I should have tried harder to be an astronaut. Or a vet. Or cowboy. Or media buyer. That last one made me laugh. Hard. I obviously had no fucking idea who I was, even if it was written down.
This is what I must be. Free.
I want everyone to go to their window. Look west. Tonight, at midnight.
See that glow? It’s me burning me down.
I’ll start new tomorrow.
A fresh day.
A spotless sheet of paper.