Coming Out of the Closet

lsw-x

I was rummaging through my closet earlier today. Dangerous activity – – very dangerous.

Everyone has one of those closets, don’t they? Or is it just me? For me it’s a closet – – for others it may be a drawer, cupboard, big box in the attic – – whatever. It’s all the same. It’s stuff.

Just stuff. Nothing of real import to the world. Nothing practical for every day use. Just stuff.

Photos that haven’t made it into the books yet.

Ticket stubs from travels long ago.

Old business cards from jobs no longer held.

Clothes never to be worn again – but they were cool once.

Just stuff.

In that closet – I came across a poem that I once tore out of a book in a library. Shame on me, I know.
Ever have a piece like that? It just strikes you. Speaks to a part of you that isn’t necessarily a part of everyday life . . but it’s there, at any rate. It’s a part of you that surfaces just long enough to appreciate the moment . . and then tucks itself back away again until next time.

That’s what is in my closet – – just my stuff.

Louise Labe’

I live, I die, I burn, I drown
I endure at once chill and cold
Life is at once too soft and too hard
I have sore troubles mingled with joys

Suddenly I laugh and at the same time cry
And in pleasure many a grief endure
My happiness wanes and yet it lasts unchanged
All at once I dry up and grow green

Thus I suffer love’s inconstancies
And when I think the pain is more intense
Without thinking, it’s gone again

Then when I feel my joy is certain
And my hour of greatest delight arrived
I find my pain beginning all over once again.

Somewhere, in my closet, I’m sure that poem still strikes.

Got something in your closet to share? I could go into great detail about what else is in my closet . . . some of it would just be too embarassing for words. Astroknight would never let me live it down, of that I am sure. But just to satisfy the curious – I’ll share one item that may, or may not, sully my sterling reputation

I found a quart container of pink liquid latex. Half full.

Your turn

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10 thoughts on “Coming Out of the Closet”

  1. 12 Oreo wafers, licked clean by my 3 year old.

    An old comfortable shirt that an old boyfriend gave me years ago that reminded me of some of my mistakes. (In the garage sale pile now.)

    A spiral bound notebook that I wrote in when my husband and I had arguments at the beginning of our marriage, 15 or so years ago. In it, sketches of vicious animals drooling, big fangs, blood and gore. 😕

    Real interesting stuff, huh?

  2. For me it’s all spread over and I stumble across it here and there. For some reason I seem to find most of it in my camera or carryon bag. There’s always something from a past trip in there that brings me back to a previous time. It might be the note that mrs. Knight left me before I went to Zimbabwe for three weeks (which I now carry with me whenever I travel) or the map of Vegas I had in there for my first trip out there a few years ago for the Adult Expo. The camera bag had a few cartoons that I chopped out of the funny pages, and for some reason I found that I still had that “O So Very Cherry” button from when I waited tables at the Village Inn in college. I remember how they decided to do a big pie promotion and the manager said that he saved that one out special for me. :mrgreen: In the drawer I have my “Beaver Sunblock” shirt, the one with a blonde on the back holding up a tube of Beaver Sunblock saying “Hey guys, let me rub some beaver on your face!” that reminds me of working in the caf and snack shop in college and the one female friend who absolutely hated that shirt. I think I partially keep it around in hopes that we all get back together one of these days so I can wear it and really set her off.

    I think I like having the stuff spread all over. If I have it all tucked in a closet or drawer there’s part of me that’s going to want to avoid that closet or drawer. I just don’t get in the mood to look back at things like that. If it’s spread all over, then it sneaks up on me and normally brings back a nice memory. 🙂

  3. I gots me one of those…only, it’s not just a closet. It’s the entire office room! 😳

    And it’s funny you should post this because I was just going through the closet in the office this week, and found an old picture my husband took of me when we lived in Hawaii. It was taken in the middle of the night, for one of his photo projects for a class. I was wearing an evening gown…in the pool! That brought back memories…particularly of the look on the security guard’s face when we came strolling back through the lobby, me and my soaked evening gown and all!

    There was so much crap in that closet, though, I don’t even remember all that’s in there. I just shut the door and silently hoped it would all magically clean itself…it didn’t. 🙁

    And don’t even get me started on the rest of the office! lol.

  4. Hmm..my closet is full of my husband’s crap. That man is a clothes horse beyond compare and the shoes????? Don’t get me going. I have a box. Just one box of things past. Dried flowers, letters, notes, photos, tidbits and doo dads. But I know everything that is in there and why it’s in there.
    Of course we have junk drawers FILLED with things like shoelaces, spare keys to locks we no longer have, rubber bands, nuts, bolts, batteries, etc….BLECH.

  5. Living abroad it is precisely things like that I miss the most, comming accross a un unopened box from the moving time before last 😉 All my photoalbums or my mums for that sake 😉

  6. This is totally unrelated to anything to posted, but we are birthday twins… so happy early birthday from a random person who shares your bday.

    🙂

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