The fellow who bogarted my tax shelter

     I shot this JPG this morning through the western window of Walter Street-the window facing the street.  You can see a pile of donations on the curbside along with a kick stood kid size bicycle.   A computer tower, a cast iron fajita pan, two plastic garbage bags, one filled with old clothes and the other filled with old kitchen items.  Also, a deflated soccer ball that I am certain can no longer hold air.   The old clothes were once worn by myself, and the used kitchen items were once used by both myself and Julie.  The bicycle, on the other hand, is owned by the a stranger who, it turns out, came along through Walter Street to bogart all of the donated items that he thought was of value for himself.  Through no timing of my own, I was able to see him do this and to take JPGs of the said bogarting.

     Who is this man?  Why is he a stranger?  What will he do with all the stuff he's bogarting on Walter Street?  I watch him through our western facing window.  I stand in the shadow of our black out drapes, watching him quietly, thoughtlessly.  I watch events unfold.  What I know is that I do not know this man.  What I know is that he was born of mother.  What is know is not what I am thinking about, however, as I watch him return to grab my bag of donations.  I was thinking about all of the pants and shirts that I had stuffed into that bag.  I had to choose each article from among the rest of my clothes hanging in the closet.  The oldest were the ones to go, of course, and I thought about how long I had owned each one, where and when I had first purchased them, the time I had spent in them, the life I had lived.  Memories, really.  Each article of owned clothing has shared a certain segment of my life, holds a specific amount of my own personal history in its thread and weave.  If I were to take each pant, shirt, jacket, sock, belt, t-shirt, boxer short, set it before me and think about each one, I would be able to lay out a map out my adult life in cloth form.  I wonder what kind of pattern that would create.  

    

     I don't think this fellow has any idea what individual history he bogarts with that white plastic bag he so nonchalantly picked off the curb and wheeled away with.  Or does he?  Does he know more than that?  He could be someone who understands himself as a salvager of forgotten memories, someone who trades lives in the same way that people trade cards, or hats, or ferns.  I don't know him.  But even with that, I like to think that he is taking the History of Roland in that white plastic garbage bag and reincarnating it into another perhaps higher, more exalted state of existence.  I like to think that the lives my frayed and holy pants and shirts will soon be revived on the backs of kings.