The reasons I’d like to destroy all copies of this CD are:

It represents the fall of what I feel had been a great thing… a strongly bonded group of late-adolescent best friend musicians that had been through so much together.  By the time this disc was recorded, the original members had moved across country, my brother had been kicked out of the band (by me), and real life ensued (meaning 9-5 or 3-12 jobs, girlfriends/spouses, rent/mortgages/ break-ups). For the band, this meant a slow but certain breakdown of leadership and vision. Add to that a talented outsider with his own very personal vision plus a misguided choice(should have been Larry!) in who produced/engineerd your record… and well, that’s disappointment.

Hello. My friend Meghan referred you to me, and so it is for that reason that I have come to you for help. This box of photographs has been haunting me for well over a year now and it’s time to let go. I had printed a bunch of these photos for a friend who asked me if I would, and added some of my own to the mix in hopes of brightening his spirits. Upon completion, I phoned the friend to ask if I could drop them off at his house and he replied that he didn’t want them. So I have been stuck with this gift ever since, moving the box from place to place in hopes that I may find a new home for it or find something to do with it or somewhere to show the photographs or maybe give it to the person it was intended for even though he doesn’t want it…

Anyway, I need to get rid of this because it’s driving me crazy. I think the best home for it would be to display the photographs in some sort of gallery setting, even if they are just thumbtacked to the wall. I feel like people need to see them. They can be donated or auctioned or whatever. I would prefer that they not be destroyed because of the time that was put into making them.

So I release to you a box of photographs by Molly Harrington and Robert LeBlanc, printed by Mahalawanda. Please enjoy them and do what you will.

My former employer gave me this set of keys. She was neurotic and had a very particular way of doing things. Loading the dishwasher, locking doors, starting her car. She had bi-polar disorder and quickly swung from high – happy states, to low – crazy states. She often threatened she would jump of the Fremont Bridge. I saved the keys as a memento of my time spent with her and secretly hoped that having them would keep her alive. I’d like to free myself of this responsibility and guilt.

I was given this hat by the second George I’d ever met. I was living in Hawaii, he was a marine serving his four years. Man, I don’t even know what to say, I’ve wrapped so much memory into this hat. I guess that is simply why it has to be released. George traded his green military hat for this hat from the head of a nice paddy farmer he encountered (peacefully) while doing jungle training exercises in Japan. When he went back to Hawaii, he hung it on the wall. He had already had it a few years when he gave it to me as my parting gift from Hawaii. I have cared for it since 1999, moving it, hanging it, moving it, storing it, moving it, hanging it. I’ve thought of it as an interactive cultural act and would frequently hang it next to the National Geographic Historical geography of Japan map (which has already been released).

I have to release this check, as well as what it represents – payment for an experience that was so deceitful and horrendous there could never be compensation for what I endured. An old lady tricked me. She asked if I was available to stay overnight on her couch the night of her “minor surgery”. She was a stranger at the time, but lives one floor above me in our apartment building. “Sure” I told her. No big deal, I thought.

The next day her daughter called me, someone I had never met or ever spoken to. She explained that her mother was scheduled for plastic surgery on her face, but that she didn’t want anyone to know that was her “minor surgery”. I felt it was too late to back out of my commitment to stay overnight. Then the old woman called me the day before her surgery to say I needed to be there at 4pm. This was indeed not just an overnight stay. I told her that I knew she was getting a facelift and that I wasn’t comfortable with blood. I would be unable to do any hands-on, so she should hire a professional caregiver.

“Oh no” she said, “you just need to be there. You don’t need to do anything.”

“Okay” I said.

I met her in the hallway of our apartment building when she returned from surgery. I couldn’t look at her face without getting nauseous. It was battered. Here was an 85 year old woman with swollen, bleeding lips, eyes with stitches and swollen shut bleeding stitches around her mouth. She was being escorted because she was dizzy and could not see. I was both furious and sickened.

I stayed with her all night, getting her throw-up bucket when she got sick every hour. A glob of puss formed at the corner of her mouth and I didn’t care. She had lied about what she needed from me, and she had done this atrocious thing to herself. I was in shock for 24 hours after staying with her. I could not eat, sleep or think straight. I am still processing the experience, why someone would choose to do this to themselves, and also the “surgeons” who commit such violence to another person’s body.

Seniors get taken advantage of all the time, however, in my case, I got taken advantage of by a senior – and no amount of money could compensate me for that hell night of blood and throw-up.

Wow. This one is really heavy. It’s a sketchbook I had in my senior year of high school. Going away to different schools, my girlfriend and I had planned to break up once we left, which made for a very weird relationship. One day I noticed she had written me a note in my sketchbook, so I wrote her one back. I wish I hadn’t because we began to communicate in this awful way for some time. Also, I didn’t know it at the time, but she was really crazy (like insane). She made up a brother who never existed who she claimed to have killed, accidentally, which brought on a lifetime of beatings from her parents. All completely untrue, and I’m sure described in detail in the sketchbook.

This abalone treasure box held the sparkly silver engagement ring I was given in 1999. The ring slipped off my finger in the Pacific Ocean, just off the coast of Maui. Later, it held the “new” ring made of twigs and grass, which quickly unraveled and fell to the earth.

Guilty of aggravated counts of being too large, my scanner has been cluttering my workspace and my life for several years now.  It looked so small in the picture, but when it arrived on my doorstep it was anything but.  I don’t know why I ever thought I needed one of these things, I’ve used it like 3 times total, and for those 3 uses I have been lugging it around from apartment to apartment, kicking it while I work, wiping it free from dust, and I finally decided that I’ve had enough. It keeps me bound to my younger self, when I was caged a room cluttered with computer gadgets.  Please do me the service of removing this nuisance from my life in whichever way you see fitting.

Dear SRS, Enclosed is a letter I wrote to Carrie V; the last one I will ever write to her. I’m tired of feeling bad that she hasn’t responded to me in ten years, but then again, she has always been the center of her universe, so why would I ever think she would write? Anyway, I would like you to read it and then send it away maybe in a balloon or down a river, whatever you decide is okay by me. Maybe you don’t know this about me, but when I am done with someone I am really done. There is no turning back. Maybe it’s my Sicilian blood. We don’t like to be wronged. So, Carrie V is out of my life, my dreams and my thoughts as soon as you take care of it for me. I will have more things to dispose of in the future, but this is it for now. Thanks for your services.

A year ago I came across a duck struggling in the middle of a busy street. It had been hit by a car. Eventually, with the help of a friend, I placed the duck in a box and drove it to the Audubon Society. After examining the duck and assuring me they would work on getting it healthy again, the vets gave me this card. They said if I wanted to, I could call every day to see how duck (191 – lesser scaup) was doing. The next day I called and the duck’s health had improved slightly. I called the day after and the duck had stood to eat. I assumed the duck had been saved, so I didn’t call the next day, and instead I went on a little trip to Seattle to see my sister. At dinner, someone ordered an appetizer that happened to consist of roasted duck. Knowing duck 191 was still healing, I took no more than one bite.  The next day I called and was told that duck 191 had died in the night. Though it was subtle, I was convinced, and still am a bit, that the one bite of duck I took that night led to the death of duck 191. I often feel responsible for things that are out of my control. I’d like to give my guilty conscience a rest.