Move

Every time I come someplace new, it takes me a little while to learn how to live in the space, like I am starting myself over again and have to retrace some steps. I retain tight connections to the last place I was in, volleying emails with re: back and forth like it’s a tennis match, the original subject line lost in the depth of the conversation, while still trying to forge new ground and tether myself to the present and then the future. I feel 16 and I feel 116 as I lay in bed and think of walking across the street for coffee and wondering if it is time to eat and start the day.

I do odd out of place things like start vacuuming at dawn and laying out clothes to save time. I feel myself starting to have a tantrum when I am talking on the phone and have to figure out when waking is and when sleeping is. It takes some adjusting. It’s not instant or easy.

My body misses the other bodies around it. My husband, my family, my dogs, their warmth evaporates from my skin and I fear I won’t remember their touch. The memory of my now long dead big dog’s silky chest fur still resides in my hands but he’s the only one that stays. Everything and everyone else vanishes.

I eat things I wouldn’t normally eat, as my life becomes a bread circus, and all my rules are thrown out the window, as if there is a new sheriff in town, and there is a period of lawlessness that is inevitable. Laundry is done hastily in the bath then clothes put on still slightly damp.  I wear the same makeup for more than a day because there are no witnesses, no one to hold me accountable to my daily mess and mismaintenance. I can do anything, wear eyelashes overnight and look mysteriously fresh at 5am.

I wonder if the is the beginning of mental illness or signs that the disease has progressed. I am not sure if this is sickness because I don’t feel bad, just different, slight unease but not distress, like I am recalculating my route, trying to sync up to the signal of my satellite, because its having trouble beaming through all the tall buildings of the big city.


5 thoughts on “Move

  1. Margaret, you are SO poetic!
    I absolutely LOVE reading your blogs.
    Starting over is scary, but I know the feeling– it’s great! You can make yourself over the way YOU want to be– not a product of your environment and reputation. Warmest Wishes, Drew xxx

  2. This is why everyone loves u. People can identify w/u because ur real & focused & concious of the world around u…….welllllll & funny as shit! Ur state of Emergency tour brought me & my husband together. (I say husband cuz we are too old to be boyfriends & not stupid enough or sterile to be “life partners”…….enough bout me. Whatta u think of me? Jk. Anyway thank God gave fag’s like me M. Cho! Thanks for the husband! U will blend into ur new enviro……u always do. Love- aaron

  3. loved many of your entries but this one reminds me that new york has become so booooooooooooooring and i prefer parker posey to drew barrymore as i could tell you more but that would be irrelevant for many reasons at present, but would mean more after 12 years of shitty showcasing and documentaries from idiots finally close the curtains on a repugnant, ungrateful, racist and flaccid orchestration of prunes. loved many stories, today reminds me of something that some won’t address but you’re trying.

  4. Wow. You are too much to be contained in just one body, one brain, one life! You want to explode all over the place. At least that’s how it felt reading about how it is for you when you move into a new place and new lack of routine. When I am going through too much change I tend to get reckless and uncaring, just going with it, so I can relate to what you wrote. but don’t worry, as the Firesign Theatre once said, “We’re all bozos on this bus!”

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