I got a call from my friend Mipa last week. "They're moving me out," she said by way of greeting, her mouth full of something crunchy, "so you'll have to come get your stuff."
I was momentarily confused. Mipa and I had lived together for a nanosecond at the hippie flophouse in 2003, but we've both long since moved on. And the only stuff of mine she has is important stuff, stuff she actually uses, like the microwave. And I thought she got along really well with her landlords, so the news that they were evicting her was bewildering.
"Why are they moving you out?" I asked, concerned and prepared to offer her our futon if she was in need.
"They're giving my prime real estate to someone with a higher rank," she spat into the phone, "they're taking away my filing cabinets. Fine, I said, take 'em. But when some disgruntled judge calls up asking for a copy of the 1982 search and seizure form and you don't know where it is [pause for horking], that's not my problem."
"Ooooh," I said, relieved, "you mean you're switching offices at WORK."
Mipa and I used to work together at an Ontario government ministry whose acronym rhymes with "BAG". BAG was a good gig. The actual work was . . . well, anyway, I adored my boss, the pay was choice, and I met the some of the smartest, funniest, coolest, sweetest and most talented people I know working there. And, for the last year and a half that I worked there, I had my own office. FUCK that office was beautiful. I knew, when I walked into it for the first time, that I would never in all my life have an office that nice again.
I kept a lot of stuff in that office and when I left on New Year's Eve of 2004, I took MOST of it with me. But my lovely plants and one box was left behind. Subr, who inherited my beautiful office, urged me from time to time to come get the box and I would come by to visit, but it would be too cold out to take the plants home, or I'd have plans to go grocery shopping and couldn't carry the box. Eventually, Subr moved offices and took my plants with her, sticking Mipa with "the box". As Mipa moved from office to office, taking my box of stuff with her, "Roro's box" soon became "Roro's goddamn box" and her pleas for me to come and pick it up grew more urgent.
But by this time, I didn't really want to pick up the box. I wanted to wait a little longer. I wanted to be surprised by the box, transformed by its contents, transported back to a time of much cutting, pasting, fruitless editing and surreptitious Television Without Pity reading. The box needed to ripen. It had only been a year and a half. The box was still green.
"Green? Are you fucking kidding me? You should see the size of the cubicle they've got me in. I seriously doubt you even could get your goddess-like ass in here. My own stuff is spilling into the hallway as it is. The box stops here. Come on Tuesday." And with that, Mipa hung up.
And so it was with a somewhat heavy heart that I had a coffee with Mipa, then went with her to BAG on Tuesday to collect my things. Mipa wasn't kidding - her new cubicle is so small I can barely turn around in it. She handed me my stuff, kissed me goodbye and busily returned to her enormous hallway paper piles. And with that, the last thread holding me to BAG was severed.
I walked home slowly, unwilling to look in the box. I briefly considered hiding it somewhere in our condo, but Katr's been on a cleaning jag lately and might confront me with it if I left it about. There was nothing for it. I had to open it. Here is what it contained:
A Rosie the Riveter action figure, still in its box, which Mipa gave me when I left (which handy, for now I have a pair of Rosies and they can "play" together, using their "riveting action" rivet guns in a suggestive manner)- A plastic Mountain Equipment Co-op mug, missing the lid; and
- Nine CDs.
I know - LAME. Also, extremely anti-climactic. The CDs themselves yielded little more excitement:
Jamiroquai - Synkronized (I remember I listened to this CD right before going into a job interview for a job I didn't end up getting. Eat me, Jamiroquai.)
ani difrance - so much shouting so much laughter (so much instrumental screwing with original songs that I rarely listened to it. Jesus Christ, Ani. Just play it like I like it!!!)
Lesley Barber - When Night is Falling soundtrack (because it's good to think about the lesbian sex at the circus and get a little hot and bothered at work)
Catriona MacDonald - Bold (yep, that's good fiddlin')
Bonnie Raitt - The Best of Bonnie Raitt (What the . . . whose is this?)
Original Broadway Cast Recording of Les Miserables (ha ha - yeah that's mine. Don't judge me.)
Shirley Bassey - The Remix Album (Mmm. HOT)
Jason Robert Brown - Songs For a New World (My favourite thing about this "musical revue" CD is that it was like the guy who wrote the songs had 10 great ideas for 10 different musicals, so he wrote one great song for each and then kinda gave up and turned all those songs into a "revue". I mock it and yet recognize that it's exactly the kind of thing I would do. Because I'm not so good at follow-through.)
I'm not sure what disappoints me more - having opened the box too soon, or clearly leaving fuck-all of interest in there. Next time I leave stuff at work, it's gonna be Pop Rocks and knitted dildo covers. 'Cause that's time capsule GOLD.
