The first few years we lived here in the Bay Area, I created a scrapbook. It was a big, brown parcel paper journal in which I pasted programs, tickets, letters, cards, and other ephemera. At first, I added little notes and commentary about the show or event. Eventually, I stopped working on it regularly.
This past December, I was thinking more and more about our potential move to Spain. I realized that I had all of these cards, notes, photos, paper memorabilia saved up in a box or two. And I knew that Martin had a bunch as I tended to be a bit extravagant with the love letters at the start of our relationship.
Knowing that we would plan to move to Spain as lightly as possible, I began to think of scanning these personal documents. A digital copy seemed to be a reasonable way to keep the sentimentality but not the physical weight. I figured we could do weekend trips to the library and scan them bit by bit. On Christmas morning, we walked out of our apartment building to discover that our neighbor had put his old scanner out on the street for someone who wanted it - me.
Today, I scanned the last of my ephemera - that big, bulging scrapbook that I put together when we first moved here. Eighty-nine pages of pixels of our past, adventurous selves.
There is a feeling of time and change that sneaks up on you sometimes. You suddenly wonder how you got here, now, in this moment. How all the moments in-between then and now have been condensed, erased, packaged, tidied up and tucked away. Dusting yourself off, there is a wonder at the youthfulness and presentness of the past. Then, with a sigh, you tuck it away and take out the recycling.
Day 48 - ephemera left minimal, library books perhaps too many, fireworks many more than Leeloo cares for
