Calcopo Artifacts, Little House, 3/6

Calcopo is dead, long live Calcopo.

Books, books, books. Miserable job, clearing out that little house. I have accumulated far too many books that I thought I needed and now that they are a liability as I have no way of unloading them. No boxes, no car to haul them out of here. I have a tenant who wants to move in soon and the house is still a mess. Paint is needed in a big way. Slow but sure things come back home, but for every move forward, least ways, for the moment, there seems to be a step or step and a half back. A complete and total drag.

Right now the bookshelves are unloaded, the kitchen cupboards are cleaned out. Kitchen goods are coming over slow by sure, with all too many spare this and thats cluttering my counter space and tabletop. Right now I can see all too clearly your written and phoned in words. Now I can see that this house, with all my life packed into it, is much too small for a family as large as the one I have. Had around me.

Nevertheless it's been an adventure of sorts cleaning out the past. I've been tripping back into a time that I thought was long behind me, but in uncovering artifacts it comes jarringly into my present. It's more than just uncovering dust bunnies and spider webs, it's coming across old letters and photos and such. Not just ours but those from life in general. Snaps of The Boy from his youngest possible days, journals filled with poetry written for wives and lovers other than you. Art projects left undone. Notes scribbled and left behind. Recipes left unmade. Books left unread.

It didn't take much to find bits and pieces of our life amongst the rubble of the life I lived in that house. Some may say that we didn't have one, a life, but in our shared, shadow world, we did. For a time it was vibrant, pulsating. Not pitch perfect, but the humm of a song that was on it's way to becoming a full fledged orchestral piece. I know that those fully packed days could do nothing less than leave pieces of evidence behind. I like to think of those bits of life left behind in that little house as artifacts secreted away from some distant faraway time and place, somewhat like shards of jars found in miden heap leftover from some ancient civilization.

There was much left behind from our Calcopo bookgroup. For the longest time I would glean and buy duplicate copies of old bookgroup books, titles like Bel Canto, Cold Mountain, This House of Sky. I remember how much we loved Five Quarters of an Orange, and how we pretty much dismissed The Persian Pickle Club. I can remember, too, how you would, month after month, set aside The Liar's Club. That title was allittle too close to home. The title was too easy to relate to.

I found a package of caps that I bought for your youngest who, at that time, was deep into her cowgirl phase. That was to go along with that copy of Demerest's Cowboy ABC that's now stuck a box of books headed for the basement. I found a empty pod leftover from the poppies that I grew that summer, the ones that bloomed from the seeds you threw my way that spring. I came across a huge stash of fire crackers left over from that somewhat crazed 4th, the one that you attended up off Banner Road. You reported that they were good fun on your end. Big house party. Lots of people. I suppose mine had lots of people, too. The streets were loaded that night. So was I.

Then there was that Golden bird book I bought for you on that first road trip I took to California, the one that I sent to you from Hemet. What the hell was I thinking when I did that? There was also the Stokes bird book that came my way on my birthday. There was also a much used one that rode around in the car for awhile. I figured since you shared that love of birding with me I could pass that love along to my kids.

A copper framed print of The Young Biologist was resting among the books in the back room. That print was touched by you. You knew that frog in the print, for it was the same one that rested on my bathroom sink throughout the year, the same one that took flight and then, through some act of divine guidance, found it's way out of the yew. It rides along with me now, a reminder of the 27th of September, the only day I ever made you cry out of meanness.

I finally came across that Aztec print that was up on my icebox for so long. I finally found the box that went along with that Los Lobos collection I played for you that one night, that night we danced to Sabor a Mi. Then there was that book of postcards, Pre-Raphelite stuff, the one that I cadged that Sleeping Beauty postcard from.

But what brought me to the present was finding a letter I sent to you on the 2nd of September in 2006. Even then we knew that what we had was too hard to handle. We let it go long before, but struggled with that whole letting go thing. Funny how that letter was discovered by the Estranged One the day after Thanksgiving, almost in the same fashion that your email box was discovered oh so long ago. Those letters she found were full of left over passion, like spent shells, like old firecrackers gone soft with age and time. I suppose to someone falling on them the way that she did I could expect outrage, but what she read was only the dull notes of old perfume. What we had between was all gone long.

But even now, to have read that letter, I could see that what we had had going on had the half life of spent uranium.

Still does. Even at this distance. Even this far away from the scene of the crime.

That house is a crime scene, one strewn with evidence of some sort of nefarious activity. Infamous behaviour, indeed.

Yeah, we loved out of turn. Left all too much behind. Discarded what we could and buried the rest.

Buried it skin deep. Readily accessed. Easily found in our hearts. And all too easy to see in our eyes.

Never mind all that, just know that Calcopo finally rests, all to be saved for another day.

Sweet dreams, Professora.

Your WHMB