As I pack my belongings for the Great Trek North, I am confronted with the accumulated debris of my entire adult life. As I sift and winnow through the artifacts of my existence, I have to keep asking myself whether an item is a memento or merely detritus? Do I keep it, or do I throw it away? This key, which does not fit any of the locks of this house, what door does it open, and what treasures might it access? The fetching young woman in this photograph, who is she? Did I ever kiss her? Might some future historian know the answer? The letter I received from a college friend, should I keep it, in case he wins a Nobel Prize some day?

When I moved in to this house seven years ago, I brought with me boxes of papers that I could not then bear to throw away -- credit card receipts from the 1980s, for example. This time I tossed them into the recycling bucket. I had mixed feelings about this. What if I need an alibi some day? "No officer, I wasn't in Texarkana the night of the murder. I was eating dinner in Budapest. See?" And what if somebody were to write my biography some day? Destroying my audit trail would be a crime against history, at least as serious as the looting of the Baghdad Museum. Nevertheless, out it all went.

Some things I'm glad I kept, like a personal thank you letter I received in 1984 from a then obscure young Wisconsin State Senator, named Russell Feingold; or the business card of a not so obscure young man, named Marc Andreessen, who I met in 1994 when he was the vice-president of technology for a company whose business cards at the time said "Mosaic Communications Corporation"

And then there are the vinyl LPs. From about 1978 to 1988 I spent hundreds of dollars amassing a small collection of phonograph records, everything from Bob Marley and The Who to Antonin Dvorak and the Bonzo Dog Doo-dah Band ("And looking very relaxed, there's Adolf Hitler on the vibes!"). My turntable died in the early 90s. I never bothered to replace the turntable and I never bothered to get rid of the LPs. Until yesterday. I took the disks over to Amoeba Music on Haight St. and waited for an hour while a guy named Craig sifted and winnowed through them all. His verdict: $95 cash or $114 in store credit. The only one he really liked was the import of the Velvet Underground and Nico. He didn't even care for the autographed copy of Bogalusa Boogie by Clifton Chenier ("The problem with autographs is that when people ask us if it's a real autograph, we have to say 'well, I don't know'"). I took a combination of cash and store credit and went home with 6 used CDs and $50.

At dinner last night I told this story to some friends and one said "Wow, you had an import of the Velvet Underground and Nico?". When I later looked it up on e-bay, I saw that they're going for $150 each. How was I to know? Still, for the amount of time I would have otherwise had to spend looking up the value of every piece in the collection I won't complain. I have no use for the LPs -- discwashers and needles and flipping sides every 26 minutes -- why bother? $50 at least paid for the dinner and the 6 CDs shouldn't grow obsolete any time soon.