I Began

Today I began.

It’s September 28, 2022. James died 14 years, 6 months, and one day ago. He would have been 92 years old in about a month, had he not fallen down his stairs or fallen prey to any of a number of other available demons.

I loved him. Not like you love a lover, or a father. Like you love a hero - someone who routinely goes places you can’t - or won’t - go yourself. I was an acolyte. I was a fan.

James left me his personal papers - his plays, his poems, his daily journals. His life’s work. He left them to me because I was interested. I had already digitally scanned as much of his work as I could find, to keep it out of the clutches of the elements. Everyone knew I was the keeper of the papers.

After James died I chased those papers all over Los Angeles, and had boxes of them dropped into my garage in Virginia when a friend of his ferried them from New York City on his way south.

There are boxes and boxes of these papers. They currently reside in my storage unit, sharing space and incurring fees along with other sentimental objects I haven’t figured out how to use or part with.

Today I began. I opened the first folder I came to - his Journal from January of 2005.

Today a category 4 hurricane is bearing down on my hometown. No one knows what will remain - if anything - after the wind and the rain and the storm surge. In January of 2005, I learn now from James’ journal, Los Angeles experienced the worst flooding since 1938.

Or rather I am reminded. I was there. James’s Journal tells me I was there. It puts in context one of the few clear memories I have of our time together - the image of rain streaming down the interior walls of James’ makeshift living quarters, seeping into the original manuscripts of his plays. That’s when I started scanning in earnest.

I’ve always had a poor memory of my life. It’s a joke in my family. Maybe that’s why I cling to things - things that tell me what happened. Maybe that’s why I cling to these liquor boxes crammed with James’ papers. I live in a narrow margin of time, for whatever reason. Other people know my past much better than I do. That makes it hard to gain perspective - or easier to live in the moment?

Reading James’ journals puts me back with him, back in his clever, wicked wit, his luxurious vocabulary, his rich tangle with day to day life in a falling-down costume warehouse. It also puts me back with me, in those times.

James Journals are collages. He took what passed through his day, set it in context, and pinned it to a journal entry. Pinned, taped, photocopied. I have years of these journals with their barely legible manuscript pages, their dutifully typed copies, their specially designed covers, and their amazingly organized tables of contents. I show up in some of these collages. Things I said or did, notes I dropped off, gifts I gave. My handwriting, just as if I wrote it today, even though I don’t remember writing it. Almost always those artifacts are flanked by the effects of the offerings. The comfort they brought, for example.

Today I began. I read every page of “Journal: January 2005”. It felt like archaeology. I placed sticky notes. I searched for patterns. And I scanned. I scanned the chosen pages to digital files in my computer.

So I’m back to scanning - scanning journal entries about the scanning I did 17 years ago.

Why all this scanning?

The rain was coming in! James says, in January of 2005,

“She’s having my entire collection scanned. This will remove an entire layer of stress from this Hypergraphic Dramatist. Just when I had begun to worry that Mpig’s fear that my work would survive my demise only long enough for someone to cart it to the dumpster. Along comes Elizabeth. I should have asked her which Olympian calls to her most strongly? But I’ll hazard Athena.”

Athena, the ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft. So I get to be the goddess of wisdom?

Certainly not the goddess of memory. And really no goddess at all, at 59 years of age and staring down the end of my “good years.” Mortality looms. Cancer made that apparent, four years ago. James made it apparent, 14 years ago, when he fell down his stairs and later bled to death in that room where the rain came dripping in. My professional work with older people, my father’s continued experience of dementia, and my gradually failing body all make it abundantly clear that my time here is limited.

I rescued James’ work from the dumpster - some of it anyway. (That’s another tale.) And now a lot of it is in my storage unit, gathering dust and incurring fees. Will it just go into a dumpster in Virginia?

So I scan, putting these memories up in the cloud. And once I am dust and my Google account is closed - poof! The dumpster in the sky. Digital dust.

Unless. Unless I can alchemize him, and me. Alchemize what he meant to me, forge what he created and what I loved into something new that will light the fire of someone new. All the lives that were ever lived, and which ones do we know about? The ones that wrote it down. He wrote it down. I scanned it. And gosh darn it, this goddess of handicraft is gonna make something out of it.