Twelve Things in a Box

This came to me in email, and it seemed worth doing. How do I pare down my life to the essentials?

“So, say you were meeting a new person–blind date, new friend, who knows. And you wanted them to have some idea of what kind of person you are, and who you are. But you can’t actually tell them in so many words. Instead, you have to give them a box, with a dozen things in it for them to look at/read/listen to/taste/whatever. What would you put in the box? And a copy of your journal would be the same thing as just telling them directly, yourself, so that’s not allowed.”

The King James Bible Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Little Women by Louisa May Alcott The Female Man by Joanna Russ Lullabye (my oldest toy) an up-to-date family album (including my birth family and my Califamily) my cat, Gabriel, who would be seriously affronted by being kept in a box a clear glass teapot and teacup my iTunes playlist one of my cross-stitched labyrinths the dish of treasured stones I keep on my desk a loaf of home-baked bread

Six places to see in order to understand me

Plenty of the things I love best can’t be enclosed in a box. I’m also unusually attached to houses and landscapes.

The house where we lived from the time I was 3 until I was 6 (RD 2 Orangeville, Columbia County, PA) the area around Jackson, in Susquehanna County, PA the campus of Eastern College, St. Davids, Montgomery County, PA the Art Museum neighborhood in Philadelphia the roadcut on Rte 23, just north of Butler, NJ — one of the most spectacular rock outcrops I’ve ever seen (it’s the picture in the lower-right-hand corner of the first page) the road between Pescadero, San Mateo County, California