Storage space
The clutter in my mind is in boxes.
Battered and dirty cardboard boxes that once delivered furniture, computers, 500 pieces of something essential. Banker’s boxes, Tupperware bins, with other odds-and-ends all stacked on top of one another in the dark. There is also some furniture: a couch or shelf or fancy chest, but all of these have become platforms for boxes.
These are not uniform neatly stackable cartons, sealed on palettes and ready for shipping. Mostly, the tops are folded together, rather than taped, with one corner of each flap tucked under the dog-eared corner of the next. One pile sits next to another of differing height with an old floor lamp laid on a precarious slant across the top of both, waiting to fall on the incautious.
However, they are all box-like, roughly square or rectangular, mostly beige, constraining the chaos inside into somewhat manageable and anonymous units for indefinite warehousing. There is little or no hint as to the contents of most of these containers. Occasionally, a tuft of red velvet or the spine of a book peeks out from the top of one. One has split at the seam, coughing notebooks and papers across the floor. Some bear cryptic labels scrawled with Sharpie across the tops or sides: names such as “Concept Albums,” “3rd Grade,” or “Living Room 5 of 21.”
One large metal shelf is completely filled with boxes marked “To-do by:” with a series of decrementing dates trailing back to the previous century. I have only a vague idea of what is in the boxes further back in the room.
Clearing my mind becomes “work,” an exercise in shifting piles and rearranging cartons to open up a clear spot–usually for the depositing of new boxes. Some stacks can–with no small amount of effort–be slid wholesale across the dusty floor wile others must be disassembled and redistributed to other stacks. When finished, I’m coated in a film of dirt and sweat and vaguely dissatisfied.
At some point soon I need to take some time to go through all this shit.