Saturday, September 26, 2009

Time Travelling by Address Book

Back in 1990 a friend gave me a hand-crafted leather address book she had seen at a local fair. It's been a mainstay in my life all these years, though not much used these days as an address book. In a way, it's my own private time capsule, as I never crossed out any names or addresses, just wrote on new lines. So I can see how many times B. moved around the country (NYC, upstate NY, RI, PA, Canada), and the different phone numbers to reach D., who was working undercover at that time. It's as much a journal of my life as my diaries are, and I would never get rid of it. It tells the story of me in an indirect fashion, one we don't usually think of when contemplating our personal history.

The best part of going through this book was when I went to check who made the paper and saw an old, familiar name--Exacompta of Paris, and Exaclair in "N.-Y." That address in Manhattan in the West 80s dates from 1985; I don't know when they moved from that location but I'm wondering how long it's been. Certainly this is a time capsule in more than one way.

No comments:

Post a Comment