Empty Totems

A whole room full of memories can be a difficult thing to pack up when you're leaving. For one thing, you've got all the grief to carry around.

I pick up a stuffed cow and toss it into a cold cardboard box. That cow was a gift from a friend, kind of a half-and-half gag gift and meaningful sentiment. I'd made some comparison to the cow as my mascot animal, and she'd gotten me the cow months later. I was always amazed that she'd remembered.

I pick up a picture of myself and two of my best friends in tuxedoes, arms around each other's shoulders, a real Three Musketeers sort of pose. I'm on the right side; it strikes me funny to see myself to one side and not in the center, it doesn't seem in character for me. The man in the center either is getting married or has just gotten married; it's difficult to remember. I remember the feeling between the other man and myself, how we kept saying "It'll never be the same." but after far more years of having it this way than we had of that, it wouldn't be the same to go back. I wonder how it'll turn out for them. Not only the two friends in the picture, but the wife as well. Everyone thought reality would shatter them in months, even his mother, but after years and years, trial after crushing trial, there they are, somewhere out there. The picture goes in the box.

Next is a cardboard box with an unassembled model car inside. It's a 1992 Firebird snap-together model, a present from another friend of mine who was scared to death to give it to me. He'd bought it to honor the car I loved before I had totaled it, but hadn't had a chance to give it to me until I'd done it. He wasn't sure how I'd react and he was always afraid of me. I smile as I remember the cautious way he tiptoed on eggshells around me, and feel a pang of regret for allowing him to consider himself bullied all that time, though I'd never actively done it. The model goes in the box.

I turn, and accidentally knock over a little square of plastic. I pick it up and I recognize the scene from Mario Bros., where a magnet on either side of the plastic held on a little Mario figure that you could position as you pleased on the frame, which was made to look like the screen you'd see if you were playing the game. This was a casual token presented by one of my other best friends, a man of intense contradiction. I'd never met someone so smart who put as much effort into concealing and trying to erase his intelligence as he did. He had a huge chip on his shoulder. He wouldn't put effort into improving his life, and you couldn't make him. I sit down, and turn the piece around in my hand for a while, thinking of all the extremes and contradictions he embodied. On the one hand, he always made me feel included and respected; when we were roommates, he'd call from work and tell me what he was going to do or when he'd be home, or we'd plan something to do. On the other hand, I always felt alienated around him. I didn't like marijuana, but it consumed his free time. Video games seemed to define his history and present, but I was better at most of them. He surrounded himself with other potheads who wouldn't try, either in this context or any other, and he felt good about himself. The toy goes in the box.

I've gotten most of this room packed. The only things left are the things on my walls. I take down my associate's degrees, and put them in the box. I take down the bachelor's I finally got in 2007, two years after I got out of the Army, four years after I got my second associate's, and nine years after I started out at that stupid community college, feeling like a big shot because I was only fifteen, feeling like a nothing because I was only fifteen. I took down my master's degree. I read it to myself. "Mark McMahon, Master of Business." I grimaced. I have always resented this degree because I knew the whole year I was working on it that it was the death knell on most of my life. I knew it would take me away from Rochester. I knew it would make a lot of my friends resent me. I knew it would only magnify the many gulfs that allready existed between me and anyone else at that point. With the attainment of this degree, I now had absolutely nothing in common with anyone. I put the degrees in the box.

I made sure I hadn't packed my ticket to Boston. I was going to become the director of human resourcesfor an insurance company. I'd have an office, subordinates, a nice fat paycheck, and an empty life. I thought about how hard I worked to finish my B.S. with a high enough GPA to go to the Harvard Business school, all the unpaid internship at that company it took me to have enough history to qualify for such a high position... all of that for this. For a reason to leave behind everything and everyone I knew. To follow the course laid out for me, like a mindless sheep. That really, really bothered me.

I headed downstairs to the kitchen. I poured myself a shot of tequila, and held it aloft. To no one in particular, I said "Here's to you." I knew who I meant. I drank it, and chewed a lemon. The bitterness and the burn from the liquor went great with anguish.

I wondered if there was a way I could get someone to come with me. it was kind of short notice, but maybe I could throw money at them, or get them to come later. Maybe... no. No one can come with me. I was trying to reach the moon without taking my hand off the railing of the shuttle gangplank. I couldn't take home with me.

How could I leave so much behind? If I can't build bridges from my past to my future, then maybe that means I can't reach that future, not that I must abandon my past.

I sat and I thought. I drank, and I smoked. I worried, and I stifled a tear. I tried to reassure myself that I was doing the right thing; I'd found a great condo, I had met a girl there, I was going to be all set. I wasn't convinced. Something about the boxes kept coming to mind. How do I bring all these items, these shrines to my experiences and acquaintances, with me from one life to a completely different one? Without the people from which these things were borne, they become shallow, lifeless trinkets. Empty totems of lives divergent. It was a masquerade; trying to prove that the two halves of my life could be contiguous by surrounding the start of the new age with the relics of the old, like a socket into which new beginnings could be plugged. It wasn't right, though. No amoun of gris-gris could bind together a very real fracture. The hollowness of the attempt repulsed me, and I hated myself for pursuing it so automatically.





I thought.





No, the trinkets and reminders and silhouettes of what was would all stay here. They could not come with me any more than the people and ways I was leaving behind could. I was crossing over, and I had to do it alone. But could I really cross over when I'd allready arranged everything for when I arrive on the other side? Was it any different? I was leaving the safety and comfort of my home and circle for the safety and comfort of the known. It all reduced and cancelled out, and what I was left with was the known. This couldn't be.

The boxes stay.

I picked up the phone, and called a number. I checked the clock quickly to make sure they'd still be there.

"This is Mark McMahon. I won't be taking the job."

I hung up, then picked it back up and called another number.

"This is Mark McMahon. Can you change a plane ticket to Boston to somewhere else, like Moscow, or Vegas, or Dublin, or Tokyo?" The discussion went on. I wrote down pertinent information, folded up the paper, and put it in my pocket.

I started to write a note explaining, but I stopped. This wasn't right either. More gris-gris. More empty totems.

I left my backpack and suitcases on the floor where they were, and I left the house. I got in my car, and I drive, and I couldn't help but watch the house recede into the distance. It'd be the last time I saw it. It would be the last time the house would see me. No one from this city or life would see me again. Everything was over.

Everything was over.

Only now could anything new begin.