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I'm the type of person who finds the need every now and then to keep things of sentimental value. The tiny problem is my low standards of deciding what is keep-worthy. I'd keep napkins from a meal in a special restaurant (TGIF and Sushi King napkins I've done before. What's so special about them, I once knew). I'd keep clothe tags for bookmarks although I already have an entire stack dying at home; meal receipts and movie stubs to commemorate 10 years later, the day I watched Lion King in a cinema that was demolished shortly after that. Because I always imagine that in the future, as I'm advancing wondrously into my mid-life crisis and clearing the house one fine afternoon, these little souvenirs that I store responsibly will function like a storybook for my children as I take them back in time to specific dates in my youth when they ask how it was like back then (probably to finish off with a bored audience and an emo mom :S). And I've come to think that even if I NEVER sit down and look through my stash, at least I have a piece of every thing worth remembering, and that is already fulfilling as it is.

So ironically, the only times when I'm thrown into nostalgia, sifting through my collection of odds and ends is when I need to clear throw them out, forever. I've moved thrice in 2 years - two were heavy duty and required moving trucks, and the third (most recent) was simply moving into a different room in the same apartment. And all of those times when I had to clear my things so I wouldn't break the backs of those helping me, I look at what I'm about to get rid off and marvel at the funniest things I bother to keep. Some I'm torn between keeping and disposing because they're a little more special than others, but most of them just deserve to be canned like my stacks of research from college. I don't imagine myself flipping through my 4 year old Googled notes when I can just easily conduct an updated search now if I had to. Not like I would've remembered I possessed them anyways if not for forced intervention.

So here I am, having newly shifted into a different room and with much less junk (I still have mixed feelings calling it junk, sniff... Oh no, imma junkie! Noooo) and thinking of those things I will never see again, those events I will never recall as vividly again.

The year for me so far has had a persistent single worded banner flying over fleeting calendar months, and it spells 'Move'. Too many people I know are moving away, have moved already, or are planning to move. From the simple changing of local postcodes or job titles to major emigration (Vegemite Land seems to be a popular choice), people are moving about, important decisions are being made, difficult decisions; changes are taking place, and not only physical relocation. People are somewhat getting the itch to get a move on. Kinda as if Act 1 is over, and the stage is being set for different props for a different scene that makes Act 2. Displacement is happening. And to have read that 'displace often means to shift something solid and comparatively immovable' resounds a gong in me. Immovable.. something like.. a mountain. Mountains. What can move mountains? Who makes shifting something impossible to shift, possible?

I feel somewhere between my red organs and grey matter, that the word Faith is painted on the other side of that banner. The displacement of people - beliefs, traditions, habits, tendencies, familiarities, makes me want to cower in the corner and hide in my stash of Christmas past and the good ol' times I've immortalized carefully over the years. If I could, I would have everyone meaningful around me unchanging and un-aging. But I know that as good and not-so-good jolting things are happening to those I'm attached to (even more attached than I am to my neglected mementos), this is not the year of hibernation. Basically, I keep feeling that there'll be this horrid shocking surprise that will change my life forever. I guess that might be the more dramatic way of saying that soon, there will be a time that calls for much faith.

I hope that when faith summoning displacements happen to those around us, we who might not be experiencing the same, will be slower to say 'small thing onlylah' but quicker to encourage. Because I'm quite positive I'll need lots of that.