People who know me, know I save things. Lots of things. I have too many things. Especially papers and little odds and ends saved from many years ago. I attach meanings and memories to things and have trouble throwing them out.
(Brief aside: I have no trouble throwing out books at work. Space is space, and when you have a duplicate or triplicate and no other depository library in country wants it, straight into the recycling bin it goes. I do relish that thud. My Collection Management Professor said she would like to have an assignment where students had to throw an old book away, so they could get over their horror, but she just can't bring herself to do it. Please.)
Anyway, my virtual world is much like my personal world. Which is why, I happen to have every email correspondence Lester has written to me since we went away to college. (Yes, even the ones he said I should destroy immediately.) By correspondence, I mean the emails we would have written on paper and sent in the mail twenty years ago. We both had this nice habit of ending our emails with quotes and since I still have all those emails, this post is the first in a series of quotes from Lester.
"I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 A.M. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make ammends. . .We forget the loves and betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were."
--Joan Didion, "On keeping a notebook"
(Quoted September 9, 1997)