It could have been a brilliant career

Packing my bags for a trip up to Portland with Canvas church, and I notice that most of my clothes are hand-me-downs. I have all these sweaters and long sleeved shirts that used to be Grant's, and a dwindling collection of tee-shirts, mostly from my thrift-shop hopping days in college. My favorite one I bought on a side trip in Libson, Portugal two falls ago . . . and that may have been the last bit of clothing I've bought for myself. I have some new Christmas socks and underwear that are nice, and a few button-up shirts my mom got for me. Erin brought me socks and a couple of polo shirts the last time she was here. The last time I saw her, I guess. And for the life of me, I cannot remember when that was. November maybe? November? Damn it, it's just like something that happened somewhere with no clear cause and no clear effect.
Anyway, I was talking about clothes, remember? So many of these things are old. This heavy rugby shirt Dad brought from Canada I've had since sometime in high school I guess. It's a bit small, but I like it a lot. The nicest thing I guess I own is dad's old sports coat, which was retailored to fit me. It has buttons with little aligators on them, which I'm rather proud of for some reason. The buttons keep falling off, since sports coats aren't really made to go skateboarding to work in, and I have to sew them back on about once a week. Until I get around to it, then jangle in my front jacket pockets and I let the jacket spin open around me and my tie whips in the wind.
I don't even know where this tie came from. It's blue and silverish. I think I bought it from a thrift store before I got dressed up to fly out to see Erin I think. So I have no idea whose tie it first was. I bought another sports coat to go with it, since I didn't have Dad's at the time. It's black, with useless, sewn in pockets and doesn't fit me quite right, but it's close enough that I guess sometimes I can fool people. I realized just the other week that it fits weird because it's a woman's coat. It has shoulder pads and everything. I don't know why I didn't notice that before.
Last week I found a tag on Dad's old coat that has the name of the department store he bought it from stitched on all fancy-like. Bamburgs. Kirskville, Missouri. My parents moved there when my Dad started med school. I guess I was born there, although obviously I have to take their word for it. So this coat is probably older than me, bought by my father when he was about the same age as I am now.
All I have are other people's things, and that doesn't bother me too much, because I've frankly never been too interested in things, especially clothes, which are all just for dress up anyway, and I've never been that interested in paper doll people, although I will admit that some girls look nice all fancied up or whatever.
So all I have are other people's things, and it doesn't bother me, since it's all just material anyway, and it will all eventually pass away and we'll all go to our graves naked in the end; clothes decompose faster than bones, and bones decompose faster than souls, and souls I guess don't ever decompose ever, which is probably why we don't really know what they really are.
No, all I've ever had are other people's things, and I've always been just a little proud of that, since old things have stories and memories to them, and new things are so much empty waste. Others peoples things are good for sharing, I think.

And yet this closet seems so empty and alone, I think, as I pack my bags for Portland.

And I think that it's my first trip to anywhere since Christmas probably. Since Christmas. And hardly anyone knows I'm coming, and I don't even know why I'm going. I was asked to go, and I didn't tell hardly anyone, because I knew that if I hadn't been asked and I heard that someone else was picked to go, I would be so disapointed, maybe even, just a little (I hate to admit it) deeply jealous, even though I would smile about it and wouldn't say anything.
And now I'm going, my first trip since Christmas, with this bag full of other people's things -- the bag isn't even mine, it's Christina's that I've been meaning to return for probably over a year now -- I'm going to Portland with this hand-me-down laundry in a hand-me-down bag and I don't even know why I'm going. I wish I knew that I got picked for a good reason.
But I don't know what good reason that would be.

Oh God.

(Belle and Sebastian: The Boy with the Arab Strap)