28th morning

The other night I was listening to someone talk to someone else about watching Shakespeare at the ‘Old Globe’ playhouse in Balboa Park. “Henry VI.”

When I was a sophomore at Cape Cod Community College, the spring of 1969, I was going out with this lovely young woman named Linda, and as a graduation gift she gave me a beautiful hard-cover book with all of Shakespeare’s plays. She inscribed it, though this morning I cannot see in my mind’s eye just what she wrote. It does feel like the word “Love” was offered.

This Wednesday morning I am quite sad to tell you that that book, along with about a zillion others, are tucked away in 19 boxes in a garage in Caldwell, Idaho. There with about 25 of my long-ago and some favorite paintings too. There directly following the path from my spring of 2021 divorce in Portland, Oregon to my friend Joyce’s garage a few miles away, a home for a couple of years, and now in Idaho.

Moving companies have quoted approximate cost of $2000 to move my precious possessions (and their long-time not in my possession-ness) from there to here. I don’t have it. Allan Ginsberg says, “First thought, best thought,” and it was an out-of-the-blue thought writing today’s Morning Pages to share this story here in Couch Surfing today, so as to send this sadly true reality out into the Universe. My art books, my Henry Miller books, my Kerouac books, probably a hundred books I don’t even remember and which would cause me dancing-like joy coming into my view again – and all that art. I’m pretty sure they all want to be here, right here with my ancient self. Me here right now without a clue how that works.

Able to read what Linda wrote again. My high school yearbook, even.

“I have unclasp’d to thee the book even of my secret soul.”
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night