Telephone Book

I feel as though I should be bending my head as the old rough wooden joists loom above. Basement ceiling feels barely clearing my head but it does. Perception is everything.

Couple of fluorescent light strips glare down and cast sharp shadows in the low narrow hall of cringy dry unpainted drywall. Can almost taste it. Well, actually I do. The left side is lined with shelves, floor to ceiling.

Vinyl record jackets, in various states of fray, lean into each other for support. They've been on their own for years. There are no bad times among these old forgotten friends.

College schoolbooks and important assignments and projects, hibernate in the remote possibility of coming back to life in a useful moment of reference. Fat chance…but one never knows…

All these patiently waiting, growing dust hair, just enough to have the slightest smell of forgotten time – close to re-awakening with a sneeze - but not quite.

The phone book, picked up annually from the front porch, is routinely relegated to this place of feebly refreshed memories. I’m looking for a list of contractors. The Internet was not as helpful this time; Back to the tangible.

Reaching for it I have forgotten how heavy it was, or am I getting weaker as the years go by? My other hand shoots out to help.

The sound of the flipping pages focuses my memory on school days – pouring over research on organizational development – forming, storming, norming, and performing. Thoughts leapfrog.