BOXING DAY

I'm moving out of my house, I can't say when.  Even if I stay in town, I'm not staying here.

Kevin Kelly, Lone Ranger (Photograph by Tom Moore)

I have a colossal amount of stuff, so it won't be easy. I need to have the carpets cleaned, but there's no sense in doing that until I put most of my belongings in storage.  I spent part of yesterday researching a space.  

I'll take a few things with me, but most of my stuff will be boxed and stored for at least a year.  I'm limiting myself to a 10' x 20' space ($150/month) so anything I can't cram inside will be donated or sold. 

I spent most of the morning working in the garage, trying to make sense of what's there. Each carton is like Christmas.  

By The Dawn's Ugly Light by R. Taylor ( Henry Holt & Company, 1953)

Girl's Romances #135 (National Comics, September 1968)

Remember my mild panic when Michael Ondaatje came to town and I couldn't locate my first edition of The English Patient?

I had a similar episode a few months later when I couldn't find my Salinger first editions. No Franny and Zooey, no Raise High the Roof Beams. I found my bootleg short story collection, my Modern Library editions of Catcher in the Rye and Nine Stories, and a whole shelf of Salinger criticism, but not the other two.  

Turns out they were in the garage the whole time, along with my signed George Pelacanos novels and my first printings of Paul Auster's "New York Trilogy" from Sun & Moon. 

Sonofabitch.

I filled up a recycling bin with old magazines, but there's more where that came from.  I need to call the city and have them park one of those huge dumpsters in front of my house.

It's the only way I can clean out the garage.