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.