new york sunset

 This is the view from an upstairs neighbor's place. He died recently, in his 90s, and his apartment is about to be gutted. It is melancholy to see all of his erudite life headed for a dumpster. There is no one left to care for the cans of film, the books he wrote, the sheet music, the record collection, his wife's photographs. His daughter-in-law, too, is old and has no time to go through the trash looking for treasures.
  That, along with Elaine's death, makes me think about how much too much stuff I have. I have been going through the old story files, the old Life and People magazines with the thousands of words I have written (many I can't even remember!), the notebooks in my handwriting I can't read, the audio tapes of interviews with Presidents I don't have a way to listen to, the videotapes of my old TV shows I can't play, the book proposals on floppy discs from long ago computers, the portable Olivetti typewriter version of a novel. The detritus of life, and Life. Enough already, as they used to say in New York.