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UnpackingApril 01, 2007 Time like an ever-rolling stream has been bearing all my interesting thoughts, images, and happenings away before I get down to writing about them, and when I do get down either my body's too tired or my mind's too cluttered to do them justice. Morning is my best writing time, and mornings have been devoted to unpacking, arranging, and rearranging Stuff -- I notice something in a half-unpacked box and suddenly know where it goes . . . See, I was going to write something about the computer guy, the one who introduced Morgana V to the wireless network right after I moved in, then it dawned on me that the shoebox on the top shelf of the unit that separates my bed from the kitchen would be perfect for the few tree ornaments I've collected over the years (even if you habitually don't do Christmas trees, people still give you ornaments). The shoebox already held four sherry glasses from my grandmother's house -- I don't drink sherry but they remind me of Grandma, and especially of the way she sat on one of the sofas in her living room, offering port or sherry to whoever was assembled for Sunday dinner; at the time I wasn't of an age to drink either port or sherry, and now, much later, I still wonder if one of the proffered options, half port and half sherry, was a peculiarity of my grandmother, or her family, or her class, or her time -- but I'd been thinking of displaying them on that top shelf so I stood on the bed, lifted down the box, and unpacked it. The glasses were wrapped in four sheets of yellowing newspaper. Of course I had to spread one out: page A12 from the news section of the Washington Post for July 2, 1985, which means I packed them (and hadn't unwrapped them) since I was packing to leave Washington. Top headline: Premises of TWA in Madrid Bombed: 1 Killed; Caller Links Blast to U.S. Policy. Next one down: Israel Schedules Release in 48 Hours of 300 Mostly Shiite Prisoners: Rabin Discloses Figure at Conference on Terrorism. And in the bottom third of the page, a jump from the front page: Israeli Cabinet Declares Emergency. Filling space around the page are three short items: Explosion in Greece Destroys 3 U.S. Cars, Bomb at Rome Airport Injures 6 Bag Handlers, and Druze and Shiites Battle in W. Beirut. The day's apparent lead story jumps to A11, on the backside of A12: hostages from hijacked TWA Flight 847 were united with family members in Frankfurt. Notes the head in the upper right corner: FBI Curbed in Fight Against Terrorists: White House Limit on Funding Noted. Reagan being president at the time, it's the Democrats who are all fired up: "It's one of the most foolish things I've seen since I've been up here," Senator Lloyd Bentsen, Democrat of Texas, is quoted as saying. "Here you have terrorism on an increase around the world, and you know it's going to increase in the United States and we must fight it." Unpack that, if you will. I've been itching to blog about how, contrary to common USian belief, neither terrorism nor the Middle East sprang into existence on 9/11/01, but the reason I'm itching is also the reason I haven't done it: I'm copyediting an interminable book about terrorism and my daggerous thoughts about the jargonish cluelessness of privileged white guys are still too predictable for publication. My little time capsule says, Get on with it already. So I arranged the four sherry glasses with other objects already on the top shelf (a wooden statuette of a rearing horse and a brown Wedgwood pitcher, also from Grandma's house; a stuffed Husky that does resemble Rhodry except for its blue eyes; a jar of pennies; and a vase given me by a long-ago girlfriend who bought it because, she said, it had my name on it, which is to say she thought it was outrageously tacky and I'd probably like it), then gathered the tree ornaments, packed them in the shoebox -- perfect fit -- and put the shoebox in the closet. This pretty much completed the emptying of the huge Gateway 2000 box that had "Ribbons, Doodads, Etc." scrawled across the top in black Magic Marker. A momentous occasion because I had determined that the permanent retirement of this box (which Morgana III came in, summer of '97, with Windows 95) would be a Major Milestone in my unpacking: once the very many and very various objects therein had found places in my new apartment, I could declare myself (nearly) settled. So I broke down the box and, using my weight to good advantage, twined it up with a bunch of other, lesser broken-down boxes. It's ready for the next dump run, and my floor space has increased by several square feet. It's now 7:50 a.m., I've finished a pot of tea, and I got to watch a lovely sunrise through the tangly branches beyond my east-facing windows, but I'm only just now getting around to the computer guy. Last Thursday's M.V. Times reported that he'd been busted on March 21 for "open and gross lewdness and lascivious behavior" toward a woman who works in the same building as my neighbor. When he set me up with wireless, he noticed my several (not unpacked) Ariat boot boxes and asked if I was a horse person. Yep, I confessed, and asked if he rode. Not on the island, he said; up around Hamilton.
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