mementos
I rode my bike to a store earlier for cigarettes. A couple blocks from there, I passed an old man with long grey hair on a bicycle. He turned and said something about his slow speed; I flashed him a smile and sped by. When I emerged from the store, he was there with a red rose he'd picked for me, saying "You have a pretty smile. You seem like a nice person." He headed inside, I biked away. It pleases old men often to flirt this way with young women; I find such encounters usually harmless and sweet, intended simply to brighten the days of both parties. I biked home and hung the rose on my mailbox. When it's withered, I'll throw it away.

When I was half the years I am now, I kept mementos of everything. From concert ticket stubs to birthday cards, to flowers dried and pressed between pages of books, whether from small encounters or grand escapades. I liked having them there to remind me, and it gave me a twinge to ever throw such mementos away, as if I was somehow betraying the reality of the events, somehow erasing their value. (Keeping a journal is different: I write to figure things out, not to remember.)

This kind of sentimentality is something else that's gradually fallen away over the years. On the last night that I was in New Orleans, a friend strung Mardi Gras beads around my neck. When I left the following morning, I deliberately left them on the bathroom sink. I don't need or wish for keepsakes; that it happened is enough. I do homage to the moment by being present within it.

When I am dead, scatter my ashes to the wind.