I save the detritus...

...of all my meanderings. I used to be worse at this. In Austin, I would pick up every free weekly, handmade zine, printed template for madness, and cultural event hand-out (y'know, the flyers that MOTORBLADE--the rollerblading late 20th century version of Mercury, thrusting his body through central Austin environs, armed with a power stapler and a backpack of 8 and a half by 11 announcements for punk shows, underground theater cabarets, and stencil art revues--posted up on every community-friendly public bulletin board. (I used to stand and stare at the overwhelmingly thumbtacked bulletin boards outside Wheatsville Coop on Guadalupe for minutes and minutes, eventually forgetting what I had come to buy at the store. But I love information, what can I say?)

Anyway, freebie lit is such a cool thing, so I have come to be an unoffical collector of underground press product--in other words, a packrat with discriminating taste.

I'm only writing this today, because I happened to take notice of my cluttered worktable with newly-rested non-deadline-blurred eyes, and see that I have some stacks of stuff to attend to--sorted by city or recent destination. I have the Chicago-Urbana-Champaign tour STACK (museum passes, indie zines, Chicano/a art opening postcards, and the like); I have the TeatroFest-visit-to-SanAnto detritus STACK (handbills, gallery brochures, etc.).

But right now, it seems quite urgent to find somebody who can use my leftover CTA TRANSIT CARD, which expires on July 1st. Do I have time to send it, via 1st class mail, to my performance art/videographer colleague Sheelah Murthy in Chicago? How can I throw away this card when it still has some credit on it?

Such things as this transit card and tiny stickers with webzine URLs on them hold promise. The promise of conveyance: a sidetrip to a new musuem show via inner city bus line or a mindtrip through a cool new zine website, featuring artwork by artpeople I have never met. I guess what I'm saying is that the detritus on my desk holds promise of potential, and if I just relegate it all to the dustbin without a pause to consider...well, it's like hanging up on a friend, mistaking him for an electronic telemarketer.

My friend, Ginger, might just tell me I have "scarcity" issues.

One broken promise: I picked up a little scrap of a promo announcing a "TCU Student Journal of the Arts" called "eleven40seven" which apparently only resides in memory cuz the URL didn't take me anywhere this morning when I tried to connect to it. Promises, promises. At least I can feel alright throwing away the little 1 inch by 4 inch promo scrap now.

Hmmm. I just noticed that the CTA TRANSIT CARD doesn't expire 'til July 1st, ***2006***!! That means I have more time to get this card to somebody who can use it. That means one more thing to stockpile and hoard for future use. That means one less thing that gets thrown away.

Now on to other piles and scraps. And promises of promise.