I Have

I have

6 windows
1 balcony holding 1 chair
1 wall painted sage green

1 guitar in a battered case
1 songbook, battered

8 boxes notebooks and journals
4 boxes research notes

2 candles, clove and sandalwood

3 boxes Christmas décor
6 Christmas novels

1 pair winter boots
1 pair hiking boots
1 pair winter hiking boots
2 pair sneakers
2 pair casual shoes
2 pair dress shoes
2 pair so-so tango shoes
1 pair Comme il Faut

1 bed
1 pillow shaped like a chair
1 quilt

1 wooden rocking chair
1 down-stuffed sofa
1 simple old oak desk
1 modern office chair
1 bookshelf, 6 feet tall by 4 feet wide
2 boxes of books that won’t fit on the bookshelf
3 boxes of books too valuable to store on the bookshelf
2 boxes bound magazines, ca.1890
3 file cabinets
5 tables
3 lamps

2 boxes framed photos

3 library cards, battered and covered in stickers like well-traveled suitcases, each sticker allowing borrowing privileges from another library system
1 library card from the Library of Congress

1 beach rock with a hole in it, strung on cheap cord
1 wedding ring

1 packet love letters
1 packet letters from Michigan
1 packet letters from Barbara

1 toolbox, stocked
1 cell phone, mostly turned off uncharged lost

230 sq ft of practice space

31 tango tops
6 pair black tango pants
1 pair tight tango pants
1 pair tighter tango pants
1 pair very tight tango pants
2 tango skirts
2 tango dresses
2 holiday tango dresses
1 tango ball gown
1 pair skin-tight tango pants, too daring to wear
3 tops too daring to wear
2 skirts too daring to wear
3 dresses too daring to wear

1 laptop

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To the extent that one’s possessions indicate one’s attachments and preoccupations, what is to be made of this inventory?

Every possession is a talisman, every one tells a story:

… the sofa, a family joke: Two-of-Six’s third or fourth purchase in her Goldilocks effort to find one that is just right

… the lamp that looks like the Eiffel tower: where Six-of-Six and I went all the way to the top despite his fear of heights

… all of the boots that I own: from Keith, along with thick socks and slippers, gifts for the holiday we dubbed The Christmas of Warm Feet

… framed photo of a country barn painted with a portrait of Baldasaare Castiglione, pale moon in a pale blue sky, winter weeds aglow in late afternoon light, captured by Michigan when he was still just a guy taking pictures

… scented candles by which I hand-write personal letters

… table purchased from Hilda, a Latvian woman who immigrated with nothing but diamonds sewed into the lining of her coat, which she used to purchase the building (next door to Keith’s house) containing the apartment she rented to me

… tango clothes purchased from thrift stores with the secret stories of their original owners still clinging

… skin-tight pants and belly-baring top, worn to perform (that term used loosely) with Glenlivet in a transitory hippie joint entered through a chiffon curtain leading onto the narrow space between two buildings, off an alley in a neighborhood where the only bright lights were the signs in the liquor store window … afterward worn to the Merc for a full 5 minutes before hurrying to the restroom to change into something modest

… almost-done quilt, single-bed size, 24 large squares printed with an intricate, fleur de lis design to be cross-stitched in royal blue, started at age 9, picked up and packed away over the course of 12 years, stitches solicited from summer-camp kids and friends and relatives, then quilted on the same small hoop through an unseasonably cold Arkansas winter, oven on full blast and its door wide open to heat the drafty place, quilt spread over the legs for warmth, in a trailer park on the banks of a country lake actually a wide spot in a river manmade to serve as the cooling pond for a nuclear reactor that the town lobbied hard to get because the tax money would allow the city to reopen its public schools, which had to close despite kids and parents begging door-to-door for money to pay the teachers’ salaries; and despite the jokes about glowing in the dark, the red lights atop the beaker-shaped cooling towers glow in a reassuring way, like nightlights through the bedroom window when the local radio station goes off-air at midnight

… guitar, songbook … a season of magic many years long, ending with Barbara

… mysterious hole in my arm that never goes away, possibly my personal kipuka

… scribbled poem that started it all at age 10 in the dead of night upon being jerked out of sleep by a beckoning idea that could not be followed in dreams but only chased down with feverish pencil … match to tinder, my holy spirit burst into flame


The door to my apartment opens on Wonderland. The space itself greets me. Every possession speaks with affection. Beyond the windows are gardens and trees and a street with lively traffic; all the buildings in sight are covered with ivy. This has the feel of both country cottage and Harvard dormitory. I sit at the window and write. Everywhere I look, my eyes rest on beauty.

Sometimes I feel that I am connected to nothing at all. This is when I am spelunking, so far inside my head I forget eyes and heart were made for looking outward.

Possessions embody all the small bits of our whole, lovely selves. What do I want with a microwave oven, bicycle, nightstand, welcome mat, bowls? These are not my accoutrement. The world of my connection is small and dense. I live in a hothouse, a jungle of flowers. I live in a riot of scent!

Sometimes I feel I am connected to nothing at all, and sometimes I feel I am a node on a great, cosmic ‘Net. Ephemera. Connection. This is my context. I like it. We are nothing so substantial as dust on the wind.

Words are scent. Memories are. Love is. We are.
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