hold on to this?

Having shredded much of my paper life, I feel freer now, free to try, however hopelessly, to look back at a life from the cool perspective of an historian rather than that of a passionate diarist.  Free, not so much to invent, but to inject an honesty that perhaps was never there.  A clarity that can only come from a distance, from having lived, from having forgotten and forgiven, from having once held tight and now let go.  The irony of having shredded a paper life is that I feel an immediate urge to put it back together again, in a form, this time, that illuminates. 

fire teacher

Letting go is on my mind these days, mainly because I am getting rid of fifty years of old papers and files, trying to declutter my life a little.


Not without a backward glance - which I get to keep.


I trashed old letters and comic ramblings, ancient calendars and ugly poems that were getting musty in multiple journals:  my "little bookies."  


Or, rather, I tossed them into the recycling bin....  Oh dear!  Heaven forbid they be recycled!   
...but then, I suppose they will, as other people's lives, and their own versions of things.

water in winter

   "The love we give away, is the only love we keep."                                  

                                                       Elbert Hubbard


I am cleaning house,
a bit, during these colder days.
Found this on an old
bulletin board:

"Love shows its strength

not in the holding on,

but in the letting go."

                                   by unknown

birding sky

Let go of the voice in your head.

smoke and rock

"The more we try to live in the world of words, 

the more we feel isolated and alone, 

the more all the joy

and liveliness of things

is exchanged for mere certainty

and security." 

                                                 Alan Watts

who would be secure?

"Who would be secure?

every and any slave.

No free spirit ever dreamed of  'security' --

or,

if he did, 

he laughed;

and lived to shame his dream."

                                     e.e. cummings