A Treasure Trove

Bern was working on the bed room that the new bed from (starts with "I" ends with "A" and sounds a bit like 'Idea'--the place I dare not speak its name, when she emptied out a large, two drawer storage thing and found a treasure of stuff not unlike the Dead Sea Scrolls to me.

It was stuff I'd written years ago, some of it 30 or 40 years old that I thought was gone forever!

In it was the novel I wrote as a teenager called "The Old Gods Go". It was, in my teen mind, to be a trilogy whose titles would be based on a short poem by Carl Sandburg.

Day by day
and hour by hour,
the old gods go
and the new gods come.
Today, I worship the hammer.

I read a few pages and remember it not! What an adventure it is going to be to read it from such a distance and try to figure out who I was when I wrote it and why, by the way, I thought it had to be down on paper.

There were also a bunch of short stories I had not forgotten but thought were lost forever. Some of the titles are: 'Once softly, October', 'Being a Man', 'The Pepperoni Cure-all', 'Blackberry Winter', 'Gladys Spinnet is Dying', 'The Old Folks', and several other. I studied creative writing in college and some of them go back that far. Others were pre-1989, before we moved to Cheshire. Most of this stuff was probably in the two drawer chest when the movers moved it from New Haven! There were also a lot of sonnets I wrote to Bern when we were not much more than children, trying to woo her. (I'll have to read them to see if they are any good at all, but the 'wooing' part must have worked.

I'm so excited by this home archaeological discovery. I'll probably spend the weekend reading this stuff.

Also, among the flotsam and jetsam of half or more a lifetime ago, there were 12 pieces of stiff paper (40 weight or so) that were all about 12 inches long and 3 inches wide. They have sayings on them in my writing. I have no frigging idea where they came from or what I used them for or why I saved them or how they fit into my life. I kind of like them though. So I'll share them with you. They are each worth pondering as we sit under our castor oil trees. But I have no idea whatsoever what context they belong in.

Here they are, in no particular order, since I can't imagine there would be an order to them:

HAVE YOU HAD YOUR RITUAL TODAY?

SMOKE AND MIRRORS WORK!

CULTURE, SI! FLOWCHARTS, NO!

CREATE A RANDOM METAPHOR

SYMBOL OVER SUBSTANCE

DON'T MISS THE MYTH

PUT YOUR PROBLEM INTO A STORY AND TELL IT

DECLARE IT DONE!

RECYCLE 'GARBAGE CANS'

MANAGE BY MAGIC!

SAYING SO MAKES IT SO....

IT'S ALL A GAME--PLAY HARD....

What a mystery to me among the treasures. I have no idea why I cut that paper--obviously I cut it into 3 inch pieces--or why I wrote those sayings on it or what it all means.

I know the memory and the knees are the first to go....but why don't I know what all that means? I actually like it and, in a weird way, like no knowing what it means.

It's like a message --or 12 messages--to me from a younger me. It must be a message I need to ponder. You are welcome to ponder it as well.

After all, "It's all a game--PLAY HARD...."