An Inquiry

Where is it you find yourself?

Right here.

Might I ask you to be more specific?

On the floor, surrounded by records, books, and baseball things.

Baseball things?

Yes, books, mitts, that sort of thing.

You say ‘surrounded’ –are there in fact a great many of these things?

Yes, a great many indeed.

Do you find it somehow comforting to be among these things?

Sometimes, yes, I suppose I do. Other times, I don’t know, it makes me feel done for.

How so?

Well, this is really the one place where everything from my life sort of comes together –past, present, future– and yet it also strikes me as pure folly. All of this stuff is like a monument to my ridiculous, wasted life, and when I’m gone it’s just going to be a giant headache for somebody else. It will all end up being carted away, sold off, dispersed, or simply thrown out. I know the history of every item in this room —my history, I should say, but before they came into my possession so many of these things had a history with someone else, maybe a whole bunch of someone elses, and I spend a great deal of time trying to imagine and reconstruct that history. Nobody’s going to care about any of that when I’m dead. They’ll just talk about all the crazy junk I left behind.

I’m sure to some extent that will be the fate of all of us.

Yes, but I often fear that will be the sole extent of my legacy.