City Pages: Behind Closed Doors
Things fall apart. You mean to, but then you don't. Or you do, but then you just lose track of it all. For awhile, perhaps, there was the desire. Later, a kind of fatigue. Time gets away. Something slips--a disconnect--and the heat goes. Tomorrow you will have to set everything right. But the idea gets lost underneath, in the piles. No one is watching, anyway. No one's coming over. No one's been notified.
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This article frightens me in a primal and essential way, because I can see how quickly and completely I could succumb to this same kind of madness. I have a lot of things, not all of which I need... Games, books, comics -- defenses against the outside world, reminders of what I used to be or like, and sometimes information I want to ingest but haven't found time for. Sure, there are things i simply like, like having, want to have... Memorabilia, books that hit me in such a way that I want to keep them around to re-experience that hit. But how much of what I own is incipient madness, creeping in at the edges? How much of it is just a slowly climbing wall of detritus to shield me from whatever Other it is that frightens me so much? How much of it is so much distraction engineered to keep me from noticing things about myself? I'm looking around my office, and I'm seeing little piles of things growing up around me. How much do I want to fight that? How much do I want to foster it? How much do I want to raze the whole thing and start a new life from the ashes?
