I was thinking the other day ( About stuff )

Other than face serums, mosaic gear, yarn, books, amazing journals with the best paper and pens, I don’t have a lot of stuff.

Now Lowell had a lot of stuff. Musical instruments, records, record players (who needs 4?), books, audio books and tchotchkes—lots and lots of tchotchkes. I counted the other night when I couldn’t sleep and we have 75 figurines around the house. Everyone from Tupak to Annie Oakley. We have a giant bowl of teeny-weeny characters and those were the ones he hadn’t hid around the house and yard. 20 string instruments, 7 percussion instruments, a trombone, a trumpet, 3 theremins, a fuckton of whistles and 4 key boards. 150 records. 1 gramophone. 8 old computers. 5 old keyboards. 12 old phones. 8 old readers. 22 wireless speakers—only 5 of them swag from conferences I went to. And 7 plastic animals masks.

I’m not sure I ever really noticed just how much stuff because he used pretty much all of them…they moved around the house as he did, stealthy and deliberate. I knew how bad his nights were by two things: the pile of cigarette butts in the garbage can on the deck and how many of the things listed above were moved around the house.

And I was unaware about how much the movement of all this stuff mattered. I’ve become aware that our house felt like a living thing because everything moved—every day something—a pile of books, a few paintings, the cow mask, the trombone, would be in different places and wherever they ended up, they worked. Everything looked like it was supposed to be where it ended up. But now in the week since he died, nothing has moved. The house, along with the silence, has not breathed. Has not reframed itself. Has not refreshed itself. And I do not have the eye for stuff like this—I was the laborer if he needed one.

I knew a lot of things would change, but I never thought about what wouldn’t change.

Bleh.

PS: I also have a lot of go bag/prepper stuff from the pandemic times. Ugh.