The Past

It's a well-known fact that we southerners live with a great weight on our backs known as "the past." I'm acutely aware of that seemingly inescapable burden as I sort through pictures and artifacts preparing for our move. I don't even know who some of the people are in the pictures. Perhaps I keep their pictures thinking that somehow we'll figure it out. I can't quite envision a future, however, in which I sit with all these documents and actually do figure it out.

Keeping these things has something to do with an imagined future in which these items define me and add more to my life than they do now. But I don't think that keeping all of this will bring that about in any significant way. The mystery is part of the heritage, anyhow.

I am starting to think it would be a great relief to live lighter and to only keep that which is necessary for telling our story.

Also, much of this material stuff is really about someone else's life. I think of the phrase "let the dead bury their dead." Maybe we haul the dead around for too long and don't get around to living our lives fully. Maybe we do that in music, too. I'm not totally sure what that means.

Maybe I'm just tired of packing!