Gubble, gubble, gubble.

Having recently bought some bookshelves from Ikea, I spent the entire day today rearranging piles of things, organizing books, dealing with dust and attempting to throw things out that I feel I can part with. After all that, my hands actually hurt from the effort and the apartment really doesn't look very different. Although, all of the Artforums are now in order in that cool way were you see the descending color bars for each season. What is striking about a day of cleaning is the huge amount of stuff that you encounter that you don't have any idea what to do with. It seems to creep in from every corner. Some of it might be valuable, or have sentimental value or just show some sign of merit, but all these little category defying bits conspire with each other to form overwhelming dusty piles of crap.

I used to see a guy on the street who would ask for money and offer observations about the world. He would say his name and his age and ask for help. A little while ago I had visited the Apple store and walked by his spot and I wondered why I never really see him anymore. While looking through a notebook from 1997 I found this a quote from said Marvin Jacob Shapiro. "Show Me The Border!" I remember him saying it. It was the only time I remember hearing him make a demand. Usually he stuck with mundane declarative statements, occasionally throwing in a few weird ones like "There are Fish Facts in this Atmosphere!" to keep you off balance. If his stated age was accurate (I have some reason to believe that it was slightly inflated) he would currently be 86. Wow, I guess I'm probably not going to see him again. That is too bad.