paper

As I sit to write my table is covered with paper. A notebook containing a more-or-less master list, scraps of lists of things not to forget, pads of paper that I collect with a compulsion. Packing has always been an excruciatingly cathartic time to purge yet paper has always been the most difficult thing to sort. A product of a generation caught between everything electronic and hard copies, I'm forever unsure if I should keep or destroy the silent trees' lesser products. I rely daily on the passwords stored in my apple id and keep a handy tb of electronic storage but to my heart no email can take the place of a handwritten letter lovingly sent. 

The very act of setting pen to paper anchors me in time in a way nothing else can. I write the lists and promptly forget to take them to the store but somehow it works. Somehow simply setting it down is a form of accomplishment that allows me to immediately procrastinate by blogging instead of checking off items. Yet beyond that just having paper ready to write, notepads with their clean, promising pages--I collect them as if by having them I captured the permanence and prosperity they exude. Perhaps growing up in a home where sticky notes were a luxury we could not indulge in and notepads were gifts not necessities has spawned my collection that even as I pare down another dragon skin's level I cannot bring myself to discard the last few pages of a heart-stamped notepad. 

So I will squirrel away the bicycle papers that were discarded by another with less emotional attachment to the echo of permanence and forest paths. I will write a letter or two, sharing my precious treasures with friends who may not understand but will hopefully welcome the nostalgic method of communication so lacking in the immediacy of a world in which I can travel so easily, bringing the gift of being present like the letters on the page.