Boxes

Have you ever needed to move in a hurry - packed your boxes with only the most general sense of order, or worse yet, completely randomly? You may have started with the best intentions, but by the time you get where you're going, you end up unpacking a box that yields both toilet paper and forks. It made sense when it went in there. It might take weeks to find something you can't live without, but you quickly locate a large supply of nuts and bolts to furniture you no longer own. Sometimes, a cherished possession ends up lost forever. You'll always have a tiny frail hope that it will turn up one day (though you may have searched every box,) but you sadly have to content yourself with just the memory of it.

Welcome to my mind.


The attic of my mind is crammed full of boxes. Boxes on top of boxes. Some of their cardboard sides bulge out to accomodate the bulkier thoughts and memories. Some sag with the weight of them. There are new boxes here, supported by old musty ones patched with curling duct tape. A few have spilled, mixed their contents, and been hastily refilled in a fashion that's "close enough" to what they once were. Few are taped shut to secure the ideas inside from such mishaps. You never know when you might need to pull something out.

All my life, I've been stashing away knowledge and memories, too busy with the learning or experiencing to be overly concerned with where a particular thought was stored. You might think that a library worker would have a better filing system.


People who work in libraries tend to be a little obsessive about order. The trait shows itself in varying degrees and different quirks in each individual, but it's fairly common and nearly always present in those who make the library their career. We're the people who unconsciously face the cans in the grocery store or straighten the magazines in the doctor's office.


I've been known to spot another library's book accidentally shelved with ours as I'm walking in the stacks only because they use a slightly different font for their call numbers. On the whole, my thought processes are logical. I'm as prone to procrastination as anyone, but when it counts, I can be wickedly efficient at prioritizing the tasks at hand. My writing tends to be well-structured by the time it reaches the page, even without outlines- a handy talent when it came to essay tests in school. So, how does a reasonably well organized person end up with such a jumble of boxes in her head?


The answer is pace. It's the same reason you can't avoid the chaos when you move in a hurry. Oh, you start with a plan, shelving like thoughts together, making boxes for each specific place, each specific person. You label them logically, stack them neatly with others of their kind, but there's just so much to experience, to see and to learn. Eventually, you're just tossing things in any open box with room and stacking them anywhere they'll fit. You leave off labeling them because it takes too much time, and the combinations of contents defy categorization anyway. Too many boxes labeled mysteriously with "stuff" or "misc."


When you're young, the mess rarely matters. If you need to recall something, you search a couple of likely boxes and come up with what you need quickly enough. As you age, and the boxes pile up, it takes longer and longer to go through them all. You forget the things you don't use every day, and when you need them, you could spend days trying to locate that one elusive fact. When you do find it, it's likely to be a surprise, showing up suddenly, stuck to something totally unrelated. Oh yes, that's the word! I wonder why I associated it with this? Must have made sense at the time.


The damage has been done, I guess. You can't re-pack the boxes of your memories. It only gets worse from here. More clutter. Longer delays in remembering. Patches of missing thoughts that you can only hope you'll stumble across some day.


I suppose I could take a more spartan approach. De-clutter. Throw out the ideas I haven't used in a while and minimize the input. But, for all my logical library love of order, I'm at least equally, if more secretly, fond of the chaos.


Yes, it's handy to be able to answer a question or recall a birthday now and then, but is it worth giving up the surprise of opening a box to rediscover a song you sang in second grade or a cool word you read once that nobody uses anymore? Not to my mind, it isn't. The value of these unexpected ideas can't be measured and won't be sacrificed to keep things orderly. Life would be so much duller without the serendipity of popping open random boxes and contemplating the contents in new surroundings. And life just wouldn't be Life if you became overly selective on the memories you collect.


When I'm old, I might spend hours with a vacant stare, trying to remember some useless bit of trivia. Or else, you'll find me suddenly smiling at the memory of some simple moment long ago. In my head, I'll be happily rummaging through boxes packed haphazardly into an attic so full there's barely room to walk, but they won't be dusty, and there will always be room for one more box.

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