cleaned out the truck this afternoon, in the blazing heat: old water bottles, blankets & tarps, a post-hole digger, old parking maps and insurance cards; and a fine, handmade, yarn-and-stick creation, that hung from the rearview mirror. peeled old grocery stickers from the glove box. old recyclable plastic bags, phone books that never made it to the recycling: the truck has no brakes, so it's not going anywhere for the time being, and i'm not dedicated enough to try to jam this stuff into the car for the next time i might make it by the recycling place. i'm hoping someone will look at this forty-year-old truck, in its plain, solid steel and simple essence, and say that this truck needs to be occupied, loved, used, put back out there into the mix. taking this stuff out of it is more than just cleaning, moving, preparing for title transfer, etc. it's actually working with the symbolic nature- what does the truck mean to me, what does the stick-and-yarn, delicate, hanging creation do for me, what will i do with it now.

at 1:30 am, after getting angry about some rank plagiarism that tends to color my grading like dog poop colors a mouthful of grass, i'm now left with the last remaining chore: getting the stuff out of the trunk of the car, so that, if my wife were to actually want to use that trunk, she could. the post-hole digger, maybe one of the most important. i like to say i have a phd, even though i haven't dug a post in years. but the other is the yarn-and-stick. made by a son at camp- it's delicate, balanced, steady. like a promise, a memory, a bond- it will be protected.