I have a handful of pictures left of me when I was a little kid. Most of them are heavily damaged.. by time and the basement floods the survived. I'd want those there so I could remember way back to some point in time when I and my life weren't so grown up or complex.

I can still remember, vaguely, back to the days when some of them were taken.. but most of my memory ..before.. say..7.. was etch-a-sketch erased by the multiple seizures I had, up to that point when they finally did stop for good.
  
I have one.. of me when I was maybe 4.. sitting on my dad's lap on the.. oldest couch we used to have. I have another of me drawing and putting together this.. broad little drawing of outerspace.. which I laced with.. these little gold stars that I found a sheet of.. the sticky kind. I drew it on the back of white card stock that I rescued from the trash :D. I worked on it for maybe 3 days before I finished.. and I took a picture of me finishing it.

I remember those. Then there's one of me.. no bigger than 2.. being held up to put up a candy cane on a Christmas tree. I don't remember back that far.

I would put those things in there so I could remember something other than being poor, in squallier or conflict with someone or everyone. That's most of what I remember from 7 on up.  I'm not bitter now, but if I had to choose something to remember about being a kid, I'd choose to remember my early childhood, thus those are the pictures I'd choose.

The other things I have, on my person, worth preserving are the things I brought back from Boston. I brought back a knife that was later stolen,.. and I was given several pictures.. some small gifts.. and this little ..bracelet.. locket.. kinda thing. I also have the.. last letter written to me, before I left there.

I have chosen to keep these things because these are not only mementos of my very first love.. but they are keepsakes of the very first time I stood up for something important to me and against what I considered to be a terminal cycle of life, before that. Even though I've long since moved on, I think.. throwing them out or.. destroying them

I used to have a CD, but don't anymore, containing the recording of the first piece of music I ever wrote and produced.. it was ripped from the the single evening performance of it in front of a small night crowd.. couple hundred or so. I was able to salvage the audio from the badly destroyed copy. The song was written for Kirsten.. and I still listen to it, from time to time. Not really because it reminds me of her or sinks me into any hurt about it but it brings back my very clear memory of that night.. from the seconds just before I began playing to open the song, till the.. 2 minutes after that, where I was shaking hands and thanking people for showing up, still fresh off the high of genuine applause and a handful of hoots.

Listen, if you like.

It reminds me of something I did right.. absolutely right. It's precious to me because it reminds me of my capabilities.. which I often forget or second guess.

I would make another copy for this capsule.

A war began, in my life, a few months before that. It wasn't started by me.. but going to Boston was my way of striking back.. my instance of defending something I held dear.. and, if any of it had gone well, complete secession into a brand new, granted fragile, life with nothing but the most important things.

If I could find the time to create it, I'd sew a flag, to fold up and put into the capsule. I didn't think of it so personally, at first, but there was a sort of emblem that I fashioned from the image I could think of the very first moments I fell on my face after that effort.

It's this, if you're curious.


In a period where I have.. lived, breathed,.. transformed.. mutated.. bidden and borrowed time to use every motion for the sole purpose of carving out a path, a swath if need be, and asserting my own will in life, it became sort of a symbol.. like the American flag is to patriots.. or the Confederate flag is to racists and people with rebel spirits. It's followed me, for the last few years.. and might stay with me for ages to come.

I doubt that I'd ever forget it.. unless by some chance.. the end of my life is that much more peaceful than it is now.. or in the future that I can see. In that event, then I'd definitely still want to remember how I spent my youth in vigorous contest for everything that mattered.

These are all things that, for the most part, I find it difficult to carry into the future without it seeming like I'm unable to move past those times. The truth is that I'd want to keep them because they were important things. Each time that they come from was a time of either transformation or transition or.. revolution or renaissance.. that I'd rather not forget, the way I've lost my earliest memories.

All that being said, I might well make a time capsule, for the purpose of preservation.. as I, indeed, move on.

I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!