The Spring Wind

"I remember days like this
when my father took me into the forest.
We ate wild blueberries.
More than twenty years ago.
I was just a boy of four or five.
The leaves were so dark and green then!
The grass smelled sweet with the spring wind. "

"Almost twenty years of pitiless combat!
No rest! No sleep like other men!
Ahh...and yet the spring wind blows, Subotai.
Have you ever felt such a wind?"

"They blow where I live too...in the North of every mans heart. "

"It's never too late Subotai... "

"No. It would only lead me back here another day...in even worse company!"

"For us, there is no spring. Just the wind that smells fresh before the storm...

-from 'Conan the Barbarian'

Found!

*UPDATE*

My bulletin board showed up!

Apparently I never packed it at all, it was still hanging up in my old apartment. The current tenant was nice enough to hold on to it for me. I went and picked it up last night.

All I can say is ....whew!

This whole episode has filled me with a new resolution though. I'm going to clear my board, for the first time in decades. I'm going to put all my knick knacks on it away, to keep them safe. This is a new year and a new life! It's time for something new and wonderful. I'm going to create a new board, one that reflects who I am now, not who I was.

I once read that if you throw away things that are magical or precious to you, you will become a beggar for magic ever after. Always trying to recapture it. Thats why I'm a bit of a pack rat.

But I realize something now...magic, and more importantly love are not in things.

They are inside of us.

Every one of us.

Lost and Found

"I was made to love magic
All it’s wonder to know
But you all lost that magic
Many many years ago."
-Nick Drake

I lost something very precious to me.
An old cork bulletin board I'd had since I was a kid.
In a way it was an extension of myself.
I had years of memories, mementos, and trinkets from a bygone age on it.

I've been living out of boxes the last couple of weeks. Finally I'm at the point where I wanted decorate and wanted to hang it up. But a quick search of the house turned up nothing. Where could it be?? Its too big to fit in a box, there's no way you could just miss it. Then the horrible truth dawned on me. In the flurry and mayhem of the whole moving process I must have left it on the rental truck.

Frantically, I called the rental place today:
"I think I left something in one of your trucks."
"What was it, we have a couple of things here. A wallet? A purse?"
"No, a bulletin board with pictures and stuff on it."
"Oh no. We dont keep any of that junk here if we find it. We throw it away."
"You...throw it away?!"
"Yeah, what do you expect? We aren't a lost and found you know!"

Years of personal history.
Postcards from those who are gone.
Irreplaceable keepsakes.
Talismans of power that once defined my very being...

Thrown away.

Like garbage.

And no one to blame...but myself.

Overflow...

You rotten kids!

You and your new fangled Intar-Web whatsit!

Why, back in my day, we didn't *have* blogs! We had to run string between cans to get our news! I can recall hearing 'bout the Martian Invasion from a tin of pilchards! Denial of service meant someone had taken a pen knife to your twine!

A great big howdy to anyone who found their way here.

Feel free to look around. Try not to break anything...