"My guitar, CDs, the rights to my songs [!!], my blue and silver necklace [?], and my velvet underground t-shirt will go to E. [my boyfriend at the time]. My record player, my clothes, and my hats will go to Sky. To Damian I give my poetry books, my wood box [?], and my tarot cards [!!]. To Natalie I will give my classical guitar, my art and art supplies, and the rest of my books. To Joanie I will give my posters and room decorations. To Rachel L. H. I leave my typewriter. To my parents, my journals, drawings, letters, records, and photos. To my brother, I give my tea set, to be given to his daughter [!!!!!!]."

Um, just so you know, there was a lot of stuff in there that was too embarrassing so I didn't type it. I don't recall planning to kill myself, maybe it was just in case. I didn't even know I had a tea set. Where the fuck is it? In the attic, maybe. The funny thing is that I am still in contact with four of those people, and Natalie of course, since she's my cousin.

I moved everything out of my room today and I am sifting through it in the office, because the heat actually works in there. Today it was -4 when I woke up (-20 C). Right now I'm wearing a coat, hat, and scarf, and I'm still freezing.

From age 12 onward, my philosophy was, "What is the point of living if it is not remembered and recorded?" and the result is a staggering amount of writing, photography, drawings, letters, and other ephemera. I'm throwing most of it away. I'm saving anything that still has meaning to me, but I've already filled one trash bag of worthless drawings and photos and other random shit.

It makes me wonder, what is the point of saving anything? Some things become more meaningful with time, most things become less meaningful, it seems. Or maybe when I came to the second change in my life, when I moved to Portland and met Donna, maybe the stuff from before that became less important.

Or it could be that none of these physical things are important at all and the important thing is what all that experience did to me, Becky. Maybe I *am* the physical evidence, not the photographs or writing. Obviously, if the house were on fire, I would save myself, not that pile of memories. Strangely enough, the photos I save are the ones I remember, because they mean something. If I don't remember who or what is in the photo, I throw it away. So the photo actually serves no purpose other than to make an existing memory more vivid. The photo is already in my head -- I am the photo.

All these items bring back a lot of memories of high school, especially age 12-15. It was magical at the time. Our English teacher described my friends and me as "a group of young men and women who were attracted to discussing abstract ideas and issues of human motivation and psychology both in class and during their spare time. This group stands out in my mind as having been particularly intellectually mature as compared to the students with whom I normally came into contact as an eight and ninth grade teacher." [thanks damian for sending that to me.]

Sky wrote this to me recently about when we were 13: "you were always so concerned with beauty and aesthetics, and i felt so loud and garish against your backdrop somehow. like we were opposite sides of the same idea. i just wanted to be out there for the thrill of it, and you just wanted to be there for the beauty of it. and there we were."

She also wrote: "i love the bravery that we had at that age... now everything is so tentative somehow."