so when I die, i expect i will leave behind a vast amount of paper, journals, notes, drawings and whatnot. I don't expect that after i'm dead i will have much desire or ability to be sad if it is just tossed aside, but my current self, not yet being dead, mourns somewhat the thought of the hours spent in producing them. Surely it was not all a waste.

it struck me one night though, and kept me awake for some time in thought, that there was a solution to this, but more than that a way of telling a story that perhaps is really independent of me. How I got to this is a bit of a longer story though... this troubling though first came to me at this place Urban Ore in Berkeley, a garbage dump, basically that people mine for bits and peices of houses. Liz and I came upon a box of papers. The thing that stood out was a one woman's daily records or every cent spent -- someone who would have been quickly enthralled by Quicken. A dollar here, a dollar there, year after year. And now no more. Is she dead? Did she stop this insane accounting? What was her life really like beyond this minuteia?

And then this American Life had this story. A couple of kids coming across this long abandoned house, break in and find this wealth of paper and letters, and other details of people's lives, abandoned as if they had pciked up and gone in the middle of dinner one night long ago. What a mystery! Who couldn't help but be interested in the fates of those peoples, construct stories and theories to fit the facts.

And so these two things came together? Woudn't it be great to take these artifacts of our lives, whether they be letters, photos, or accounts, and put them together and leave them to be found, on a train, in a cafe, hidden under some floor boards, socked away as a time capsule. What would people make of them in their minds, what stories would they create, or maybe follow up on.

Coming soon to a cafe near you!