The Heartbreak of Housecleaning

It's housecleaning season; spring's only drawback! Not housecleaning per se, it's the throwing away I can't bear.

But on the bottom shelf of an old bookcase with glass doors in the west bedroom here is a stack of 7 by 7 sq. inch high boxes. Sony & Maxell mostly. Reel-to-reel tapes from the 1970s: Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Joan Baez, Jacques Brel, Leadbelly, The Clancy Bros. & Tommy Makem, Randy Newman, David Bromberg, Leon Russell, Michael Martin Murphy, Crosby, Stills & Nash. These boxes carry such potent memories of my Denver 20s and 30's, I can't bear to. . . So, I wipe the dust and fly specs off and stack them neatly back, hoping I will happen on a good, cheap reel-to-reel and speakers.

That's not my only memory stash either: nearly as many cassettes of music and Interpreter interviews fill one of my desk drawers. Last year, I sternly told myself I must and did toss a few but some of those people are dead! Are their voices preserved anywhere else?

Next to my desk is a straw basket of CDs that can't be played on my new computer (no CD port). The contents of the basket reveal vast changes in my musical taste—Lorena McKennett (Canadian), Juan Gabriel & Rocio Durcal (Mexican), German classical, Schubert, Schumann & Mozart, a Turkish Orchestra, Hildegard von Bingen (Medieval), Peruvian flutes and Israel folk singers. I can't bear to toss any of these either, though it's cumbersome to connect my old computer to hear them.

Writing this, I realize what I really resent is the waste and obsolescence of technology. Maybe because it mimics aging? February 2013 I spent $100 on an device to play CDs on a TV. The new computer streams them directly.

I pride myself on critical eye, but it has clearly failed me here.