Heartbeat of the Walls

I am a hoarder. Not in the sense of the sickness. My compulsion does not drive me to never discard but more to surround myself in memory, even if they may not be exactly my own. I find they too easily slip away. I can't find them or see them as correctly or completely as I did before but the overwhelming clutter that surrounds me is calming. I can't forget my aunts face because I can see her reflection in the copper kettle on my floor. My grandmother's smell may be fading from my nostrils but I can still feel her warmth on the handmade quilt in the hope chest. I can't exactly remember the plot of the movie but the ticket stub still has Aunt Betty's finger print rubbed into the ink. I never went to Korea but the army coat with my family name emblazoned on the chest takes me safely somewhere, if not exactly to the green army medical tent that I know it's seen. These are the better ones, the ones that make sense but I promise the French lemonade bottle, the fake and obscenely bright rose hanging from the top of my bookshelf, and the paint covered jeans that no longer fit are just as meaningful. Perhaps my memory requires more than just the memory to function. Just like the world, my memory can't work without its own senses. It can't reminisce without touching cotton or wood; can't see without seeing. And perhaps as I age, its not that my memory fails me but that my senses fail my memory. Maybe my senses are the source of atrophy and not my mind. But more likely it is both and sometimes, on days like today, as I sit in the center of my room staring at the ageded memories that surround me in comfort, I wonder if these things will do the same for someone after me. Will someone sit in the center of a room, perhaps this one, with these memories pulsing from the walls and find the same comfort? Or am I crazy and in reality none of this 'stuff' has an actual purpose.

The physical:
A very windy Path Valley
The desired:
A future
The feeling in the forefront:
Unease
The smothering sense:
Tactile - grandma quilt bliss
In absence of misplaced action:
an ATV and a mountain path
If I were listening closely:
Iron & Wine: Faded From the Winter
My Thanks:
That no one is actually reading this blog.