Moving stuff around

I don't know whether it was because it was Chinese New Year, or listening to Germaine Greer on Woman's Hour talking about her archive (which she has sold for A$3million!) or all the trouble I had with David's papers when he died. Or maybe it was just that I wanted to rearrange my room as in the picture so that I now have space for painting.

This morning and a lot of the afternoon I have been sorting out all my papers which includes all my diaries and pictures.  I had to throw out a huge amount of stuff (mostly non paper) because everything in the trunk where I keep it had got wet and moldy.  This despite the fact that I had wrapped up most of the stuff in plastic.  Originally I thought I would send most of the stuff to Emma, but I think I could actually digitize a lot of it.  Many of the diaries are already digitized and I would only have to scan and photograph the pictures and Rajan said he would help me with that so it wouldn't be too much of a job.

There are a number of diaries from when I was in Kodaikanal that are not in digital format as well as letters that I sent to Shantam and which he sent to me when he was in Africa and later in Kodaikanal.  I just can't bear to look at them and don't want to scan them and neither do I want to give them to someone else to scan as I would hate anyone else to look at and possibly read them.  If I send them to Emma and Rachael I don't want them looked at until after I am gone.  I did come across some nice things I did though, that again aren't in digital format but which somehow concentrate a lot of the writing and painting that I did over the years.

I will sort out what really needs to be sent tomorrow.