You're Moving Out Today

So pack your toys away
Your pretty boys away
Your 45s away
Your alibis away
Your Spanish flies away
Your one-more-tries away
Your old tie-dyes away
You're moving out today - from "You're Moving Out Today", Carole Bayer Sager

 
Sitting in my living room in Manhattan, surrounded by boxes. Packing up my ex's belongings.

Cartons from the local supermarket, cartons that once held bundles of paper towels or rolls of toilet paper, but which now contain what I can only describe as "man things".

Some gals have all the luck!

I showed a friend. "What do you think this is?" I said peering into a long cardboard cylinder. "Beats me!" she answered. Fascinated we tried to pull a bit of it out, and saw what looked like a giant size  pair of kielland forceps - you know - the gynecological ones some woman-hating sadist, probably a Mr Kielland - invented, that are like huge tongs that go through the cervix to the uterus to extract babies who are reluctant to come head-first into this wonderful world.

Except these were even bigger.

I later discovered it was a tree remover. "Why would anyone want a tree remover in a one bedroom apartment?" I wondered.

Moving on.  "And what do you think these are?" I asked my bemused friend. "Hoses!" she triumphed. "Well try lifting them up, I think they are made of lead," I countered. In describing them to a man a few days later I was told that they were probably hydraulic hoses used for lifting bob-cats - whatever THEY are. Perhaps there was a "bob-cat" in with other man-things we'd already packed away.

All sorts of unlikely things in the nooks and crannies of the apartment. We even found a generator - well that's what my friend claimed it was. I have my doubts. Perhaps some reader can enlighten me. It was bright yellow painted metal that fitted easily into a briefcase. I think it was its color that made her think that. Who would want a generator in a Manhattan apartment? But then, who would want to pull up trees in one either.

At the back of a high-up closet shelf, hidden amongst some porn magazines were a few copper tubes of various shapes and sizes, with bolts on each end. Was their proximity to the magazines significant? It didn't bear thinking about.

"What's in yer boxes. lady?" said a man with a strong Bronx accent when I phoned the storage facility. I was silent. Perhaps I'd be better off describing their owner. It'd make as much sense. "Oh, just some tools and stuff," I mumbled.

Of course there were other things. Books belonging to other people.  Cookbooks. Gardening books. Manuals for things with names I'd never heard of with Chinese drawings and missing pages. I put those in the " miscellaneous box".

The miscellaneous box is the biggest box. Things go in there that have no name. Several cell phones with no insides. Old combination padlocks with forgotten codes. A circa 1990 hard drive. A pouch for a circa 2000 cell phone. Old Epicurean magazines.  Two kangaroo scrotums. "Why two?" I wondered.

It all goes next Friday. Thank Christ! I've hated packed things ever since I moved house 27 times when I was a child.  Inner traumas become exposed. The half-hearted attempts to make new friends, knowing I'd be lucky to be in the same school for more than six weeks. The packing. The moving. The horror of cardboard boxes.

And these particular packed things give me the creeps. I think it is because I don't understand what's in them. Or perhaps it's because ... well I had better not say ...

When I go home at nights this week I close my eyes tightly shut so as not to see those silent boxes standing like gravestones in my living room. I especially don't want to  see the cylinder Blefuscudians forceps one. I go straight past the livingroom to the bedroom. Straight into bed.

And now it is only two more sleeps and they'll be gone. My happiness will know no bounds.

Yep, there's only one thing better than getting rid of an unwanted man,  and that's getting rid of his carton-packaged "man things".

Sailing into Tomorrow

Sailing into tomorrow
To a gilded age foretold - from "Tempest", Dylan 2012

Tim Juliff,  1950 - 2011 Hippie, Lover, and Forever Remembered  

2012, especially the last few months were unsettling for most of us. Hurricane Sandy in New York, the horrifying Sandy Hook massacre in Connecticut. Syria.  The Noida rape and murder in India.  Pakistan's brave Malala Yousafzai. The US "fiscal cliff" fiasco.

And then, many of us have had our own personal problems and have lost loved ones.

One sometimes wonders how one can go on. But it is a New Year and for all of us who have had hard times - economic or emotional, believe me, hope is on the horizon.

 Who would have thought that American people would have voted for universal health care, gay marriage, and the legalization of marijuana  Let alone voting for a black president's second term during a time of economic crisis.

So to all my peers, to all you baby boomers out there - we are surviving.

Just look at Paul McCartney (well perhaps not .. ).  Mick Jagger (well ....).

 Let's look at Robert Allen Zimmerman (aka Bob Dylan). Perhaps the greatest artist of the 20th century and still going strong.

Roll on Bob!