Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Matthew 6:34. This was my father's favorite Bible quote.


I was at the most bizarre yard sale, today.

A world famous personage was ridding his closets of the memorabilia of a lifetime in the theatre. More than one lifetime, actually, since he was the heir to other famous folk.

I stood on the Marley floor (where no street shoes were ever permitted) utterly surrounded by trophies and accolades. Here a grateful city, a grateful state, several grateful countries and a couple of grateful empires had piled up their treasures on earth, where rats could break in until conquered by a Nutcracker Prince.

It was impressive to the point of exhaustion.

The crowd was exhausted too, each member of it struggling with his or her own displacement. People chanced upon photographs of themselves, younger, imbued with the complicated patina of past time, and browsed among the emblems of their personal brush with greatness, for this place has certainly been home to greatness.

There were pipers, God help us.

I’m pretty sure, at this point, that no one will ever have to sort and tag my trophies.

My life has not tended in the direction of contests publicly won. But memorabilia I have in plenty, small random objects that bring back to me a day past. No one else could ever know what beach was the origin of each shell, so at some point their merit will have to stand alone, rather than in provenance. At that time, the sunset that is hidden in each of them for me will once again be invisible.

But I hope neither I nor anyone else will have to put tags and price stickers on them, and open their shelter to a last wave of mourners, inchoate, trying, in the dumb random way of commerce, to make a connection that will soon be beyond repair. I hope that when that time comes, those people will be telling my stories to each other, and making fun of my packrat ways.

I hope, in fact, that my memorial will be disbursed where it lights eyes.

As his is, piles of trophies aside.

19Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

20But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

21For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

King James Version Matthew 6: 19, 20, 21