Unwrapping the Present (in 5 parts)

 

 
                    1.
The box in front of me is LaMaMa 19-
89—a specificity that belies
its jumble of relics outside the bounds.  The tale
of LaMaMa Experimental Theatre is
cluttered by my on-the-run life, a very “throw
it in the drawer and think about it later” life:
Penciled interview questions and cassette tapes, love
letters and blocking notes, pay stubs, un-mailed letters,
half-written chapters, fully-realized course designs
and student evaluations, photographs and
negatives, phone numbers and pamphlets, airline
tickets and the text of LaMaMa’s latest show.
 
               2. 
What would the future say about our now?  Now is
future to nineteen eighty-nine.  I say, “I shoved
all this in here to clear the decks for my next thing,
abandoning side-dishes and apple pie dessert for
a new main course.”  I love beginnings; ideas are
more vital than follow-through.  Christmas over-
rides Easter. Throughout life, moving forward over-
took resurrection.  Still, I record ideas on
snippets of paper and save them until I forget
what they are about, making “what if?” a useless
game.  The box in front of me is instead a time
capsule of meetings with myself that could have been.
 
               3.
Why keep forty-plus years of time capsules when I
could have traveled lighter?  It’s not that I expect
the kind of fame biographers research.  From time
to time I look to see the woman I was—not
to resurrect her—but to hold her hand and say
“I’m still the same, you know,” still the too-much-to-sort-
today hoarder, aware of the courage to live—
a talking bear balancing on her twirling ball to
go nowhere.  Resigned to live.  But in this box, I
see daring leaps, I see knowledge build on knowledge.
I see forward motion into living as if
the world contained parts of me, as if I mattered.
 
               4.
What?  Really?  Did I see matter and form back then,
or only the dance?  I stored wholeness and brokeness
in a jumble, in such disorder that only
enthusiasm is reliable—and yet, and yet—
this box, stuffed, stored and abandoned, is a pattern
of faithfulness that has touched and has been touched by
other life, and—trusting in a God I can no
longer envision nor name—I progressed.  Sorting
boxes is its own kind of microscope.  My life
was creative.  Why did I leave it; why did
I stop?  I see projects finished—research finished
if not published.  Activities that built a drive.
 
               5.
I toss out handwritten ideas that I can’t read
nor decipher, and even without that bulk,
see I have been present every day of my life.
There is something to celebrate in that.  “Listen,”
I say. “Listen.  Around the level of ego
and feelings, a nothingness begs to be embraced.
I think I’ll close this box and write." Close this box and
walk.  Toss this box or not.  Trust in the randomness
that brought me here. I am a portal, I am an
impermanence, but not a vacuum.  Painfully,
delightfully, I love the world.  Let me offer
the same attention to myself as to creation.

Posted at earthweal open link weekend #157

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© 2023 Susan L. Chast