Moving

I moved and I didn’t want to, but it was beyond my control. It’s traumatic, moving, even though that is all I do it seems, these days. My entire life is putting things that I might need and usually never use haphazardly into bags and boxes and sending them on to the next place. Everything has the wear of travel on it, skid and scuff, paint chipped, rips and residue of temporary residence.
I picked a nice place, and it had to be, because I loved my other digs, and will miss the many wonderful dogs I greeted every day in the halls who learned to sniff under my door and beg for me to come out. It was one of those fast moves, which I have become known for. Sometimes I come home and it’s suddenly intolerable, the walls close in on me, the lights burn my skin, and I am calling the realtor to get out of a lease, holding the iphone far enough from my face to keep from hanging up accidentally. When you live in five or six cities a year, you will recognize how a living space can feel intense and ugly as an acid bath. I have no patience and I cannot rest until I make it better, until I make a change.
My friend helped me load ridiculously expensive shoes into slightly odorous garbage bags, scenting british boots so fancy they required their own special visas to stay in the country, as if they were taking jobs from all the shoes here. All my fancy socks from brick lane, tethered together with twine, tissue between them to keep them from touching, went into the bags along with half full travel size tubes of sensodyne, cookies ‘n’ crème protein powder and sheets of frozen cake along with every charger for every electrical device I have owned in the last decade.
We moved instead of going to the gym, reappropriating the time for physical fitness and doing actual physical labor. I hefted everything and moved and hung up and folded and arranged everything so quickly I became clumsy. The new closet door, with dimensions altogether unfamiliar, slammed right into my face, thumping my left eye socket. It might be a black eye. The future of this eye is uncertain. It thrums with pain underneath at blinks, my Porsche sunglasses resting directly on the source of the dull pain and reassuring me with its presence.

I moved and I didn’t want to, but it was beyond my control. It’s traumatic, moving, even though that is all I do it seems, these days. My entire life is putting things that I might need and usually never use haphazardly into bags and boxes and sending them on to the next place. Everything has the wear of travel on it, skid and scuff, paint chipped, rips and residue of temporary residence.

I picked a nice place, and it had to be, because I loved my other digs, and will miss the many wonderful dogs I greeted every day in the halls who learned to sniff under my door and beg for me to come out. It was one of those fast moves, which I have become known for. Sometimes I come home and it’s suddenly intolerable, the walls close in on me, the lights burn my skin, and I am calling the realtor to get out of a lease, holding the iphone far enough from my face to keep from hanging up accidentally. When you live in five or six cities a year, you will recognize how a living space can feel intense and ugly as an acid bath. I have no patience and I cannot rest until I make it better, until I make a change.

My friend helped me load ridiculously expensive shoes into slightly odorous garbage bags, scenting british boots so fancy they required their own special visas to stay in the country, as if they were taking jobs from all the shoes here. All my fancy socks from brick lane, tethered together with twine, tissue between them to keep them from touching, went into the bags along with half full travel size tubes of sensodyne, cookies ‘n’ crème protein powder and sheets of frozen cake along with every charger for every electrical device I have owned in the last decade.

We moved instead of going to the gym, reappropriating the time for physical fitness and doing actual physical labor. I hefted everything and moved and hung up and folded and arranged everything so quickly I became clumsy. The new closet door, with dimensions altogether unfamiliar, slammed right into my face, thumping my left eye socket. It might be a black eye. The future of this eye is uncertain. It thrums with pain underneath at blinks, my Porsche sunglasses resting directly on the source of the dull pain and reassuring me with its presence.

6 thoughts on “Moving

  1. Geeeeeeeeeeeaaaaay astrologer’s perspective: It’s all about Uranus! Uranus and the Sun are very close to a conjunction. That exact conjunction happens tomorrow. Uranus rules change and the unexpected/erratic. Uranus is now in the sign of Aries which happens to have rulership of the head. In the next two days, a lot of people will probably bang their heads or have accidents. You and your porsche sunglasses are in sync with the sometimes disruptive ever-changing cosmos. Electronics will also act even quirkier than they have been during this Mercury retrograde. Breakthrough insights and innovations are also possible (especially concerning unfinished projects.) Hope your eye feels better!

  2. Moving is probably better then living in my boring town. But I’m too lazy to pack up my shit to move. I’ll probably leave it there. I would hit the door back. Make it look worse then your eye.

  3. We used to move around a lot when I was really young. And because of that I absolutely LOATHE moving. I can’t stand it. Luckily we haven’t moved for about 6 years now. I’m in constant need of stability. If I don’t have that, I start getting depressed. I don’t even like to go on vacation for too long.

    I get quickly attached to people and things. My room, my school and the people I go to school with. Sure it’s not perfect all the time. But it still feels like the right place to be for me. And I think it’s all because of my childhood.

  4. I move a lot too, but I finally think I stopped. I know exactly what you mean–the space is suddenly bad news. This happened to me in NYC with an amazing rent stabilized apt. Upstairs neighbor was nuts and noisy beyond belief. Which I could live with, but the vibes were so bad. I tried so hard to stay there. Finally I had to go. Upstairs neighbor had a subletter who invited me in & omg it was every single feng shui don’t in there!!! Dead flowers everywhere. A wall of knives in the kitchen , first thing you see when walking in the front door. Misery. Alcoholic, lonely feeling, horrible. I made the decision to leave before I saw all that but it confirmed what I had been resisting believing –that the vibes were horrible. life got so much better after I left. Sometimes you just have to pull a geographic.

  5. Hope your eye feels better! This: “…scenting british boots so fancy they required their own special visas to stay in the country, as if they were taking jobs from all the shoes here.” = soo amazing. Margaret! I heart you. 🙂 You are my sister and my friend. And a fellow loudmouth for fairness, equality and humanity and women :)! Please ~ in the immortal words of your extraordinarily wonderful teacher ~ don’t ever stop writing. Or talking. Or standing up. Or being the most excellent performer out there. Love, Mara ~ See you in Cleveland, OH on 10/5/12, can’t wait!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *