November, 2003:
left behind

For rather logical reasons, I'm preoccupied with my own mess. Almost every day something new almost absent-mindedly gets placed on a table, my desk, a chair, and then gets left there, until a few weeks later I "rediscover" it and, not being able to remember why I saved it, don't want to take a chance on throwing it out.

But my mess is, well, my mess. I'm sure that others have their own. A just as I can find order and logic, perhaps even purpose and meaning, in what I accumulate, other people grow attached to their own. An outside observer sees a mess, while the owner of that mess sees the ongoing development of a personal story. And sometimes it suddenly ends.

Almost two months ago my "adoptive" kibbutz father died. He was in his eighties, and in failing health, but his death was rather sudden. The job of determining what to do with his possessions fell partially on me. Drawers which I'd seen many times before without relating to them as more than a place to search for a pen, or some scotch tape, suddenly became riddles which I wanted to solve. Each person's own mess may tell a story, but when there's nobody their to interpret what we see, it becomes a foreign language, indecipherable.