tossing the past into the bin, we grab the present

My dearest art friend asked me why he held onto everything, good and bad, from his past...."Does it help you understand your life?', I asked.
"No, it just sits there. I can't look at it," he answered. "Maybe, if all else fails, and I just do my art and give up everything else, it will take me to a dark place..."

"Toss it." I said. "Throw it. It's saved in your head, heart and skin already."
I drew eyes and lips on my sketchbook page. Eyes of dead friends, lips of past lovers..

"Toss it. Live for today or tomorrow, or a year from now. You have learned anything you can learn from those old letters and journals...do you want to sort and keep the stuff that shows how you've grown, captures the knowledge you've found? How you have evolved?"

"Nah, I can't bear to go through any of it," he said.

"Toss it into the bin then! Grab onto now, the present...let the past go, and maybe, you can even think future once it's gone." I said.

I pulled my knees up to my chin and looked at the sky. It was blue. So blue and the clouds were spectacular... purest white, blackest gray...Whispy, pulling apart, floating low.

He looked up too and watched the clouds for a while. "Yeah. Time to toss it all."

Then he went back to drawing a portrait of himself, shoulders bare, eyes closed, arty and dark...his own beautiful self in black and white...and
i wondered about his dead father who took so long to die...