More clearing out this weekend. We donated four garbage bags worth of clothes and coats to the Salvation Army. Also, collected up about ten shopping bags filled with books and took those over too. According to the lady at the Salvation Army, ten bags is about seven bags too many from their point-of-view. She didn’t seem happy with me (I think because now it becomes her job to sort through all this crap), but I didn’t care because I’d already dumped everything in their back room, and was heading out the door.

On Sunday we were at my folks for Easter. In keeping with my sudden enthusiasm to discard unwanted things, I offered to throw out some of the junk of mine that has been crowding my parent’s basement. My mother liked the idea, but had to step away from me while I was doing it, because she got upset every time I threw away an old drawing that I did in High School or something.

From that clear-out, I now regret tossing away an embarrassing old paper that I’d written in college about an art exhibit that I’d gone to see at the MOMA. I don’t remember what the exhibit was, but it must have been conceptual, because my whole paper was about how I thought the whole thing was a bunch of b/s, and that the artist was scamming us all into thinking that it was really “deep” and full of meaning, and only chumps and pretentious fools would ever act like is was really “art”. I think I must have thought I was really In-Your-Face by writing a paper like this.

Anyway, the professor grading the paper took a lot of time to write me a detailed response (that was almost as long as my original essay) explaining what she had gotten out of the exhibit, and why I was wrong to dismiss what I’d seen. Looking back at this now, I think it’s something that would have been worth holding on to, because it now reminds me that we all go through a phase where we think we’re really ballsy and original and cutting-edge to sneer at so called “artsy” art. I clearly thought I was revealing to the world that the Emperor had no Clothes, but in reality I just didn’t really know what I was talking about.



Also: I found a grody old tooth of mine in one of the boxes, and had a good laugh bringing it up out of the basement and putting it in my wife’s hand without telling her what it was.