First day of school for Julia and five hours of time alone for me. I got back the basement and getting ready for the garage sale more seriously than I've done since the beginning of the summer. Instead of the 'easy' stuff like records or toys or clay pots, I spent the whole time cleaning, pricing, and posting on Craigslist 11 pieces. Two movie projectors -- 8mm and 16mm --, a 16mm movie camera, a movie screen, a slide projector, our old stereo -- turntable, tuner, and two speakers --, a SLR still camera with a variety of lens, and my mother's marble topped coffee table. Except for the coffee table which I hoped to use in my kitchen but never fit it in, it all belonged to David. Except for the stereo system and the table, it was all connected to his life in film. As such, it was tough to get rid of. Most of the pieces had two moving stickies on them, marking them as moving from Kenwood Avenue to Washington Boulevard in Indianapolis and then to Madison. That represents more than sixteen years of sitting in a basement. Most things that made those moves lost their stickies long ago, but no one has touched any of their pieces except to move them from house to house. And yet, they were hard to get out of the house, not because I ever intended to use them again but because they are things that David refused to get rid of even though he had not used them for years.
David got rid of his double bass and the piano that came from his parent’s house after we moved to Madison. The bass had been a decoration for a long time. He had given up playing music except to fool around on the electric keyboard that I gave him one Christmas. He could do whatever he liked on that with earphones on. David was not a performer and did not enjoy playing even for our family. The keyboard gave him the privacy he liked and some young teen got a double bass and a young couple took the piano.
I was wondering today if he had not gotten rid of his film equipment because he had not completely separated from those dreams. Pure conjecture on my part. It is hard for me to make the separation, but keeping that stuff, storing it and eventually moving it will not keep those dreams alive. Not that such dreams die. I imagine them set off into the aether waiting for some other soul to catch them and re-make their substance. And maybe selling the equipment sets those dreams free. Maybe some of it will even go to one of the crazy dreamers.
Priced to sell and get taken away. I hope so.
So, I cleaned up each piece and looked each of them up on the internet. I found every piece and a price, either on ebay or on some speciality site. I don’t know how close anything is to working order and I don’t really want to promise working order with things that I have no idea how they work. And so, I priced everything about half of the lowest prices that I found. I put it all on Craigslist and hope that it goes before the garage sale. No bites yet, but its only been a few hours.
It is raining, a wild storm is passing through. It comes at a tough time for Julia. She rarely sleeps through a storm, and never falls asleep during a storm. We had gotten to bed early, washed, brushed, flossed, a chapter of the new book -- Dinotopia read -- and lights out. And then the storm. So, I may not get any LEND work done tonight. I can type a bit or watch a movie or read on the web while she snuggles against me, but I can’t do written home work.
So, that will wait until tomorrow.
Will you snuggle with me? Julia asks. And when I do, she says that she is much happier now.
Me too.
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