Wednesday, April 13, 2011

The Longest Move

It seems like yesterday I was hailing a cab on 2nd Avenue, headed off to the tropical part of the United States, a/k/a: Hawaii. It was December 20th, 4:30 AM. It was cold and dark.  Street vendors piled the sidewalk with Christmas trees, and it was still so on January 17th, 2011.  The fragrant evergreen piney smell of trees that had been felled recently, and I imagine, bought on December 24th only to be tossed to the street as the 12th day of Christmas rang through. 


This was the day I had finally ordered the movers to deliver my worldly possessions to the apartment I had reluctantly signed a lease for in mid-December, immediately regretting the decision and spending the following weeks tossing and turning, dreams of unruly neighbors and angry landlords, who I had recently learned, were my next-door neighbors.

As if I had been born under a sign that demanded it so, it rained as it had for the past three major moves I’d been through, and for over $1000, three men busted my furniture and boxes through the door in just two hours. Not bad.   After they left the apartment, I followed them and traipsed back up to the safety of Tudor City and a minimalist apartment that wasn’t wall-to-wall boxes and plastic wrapped furniture.   

My friend and former roommate  Victoria offered some comfort, ‘moving always sucks’. “Remember how many books I had when we were living together on East 19th Street?” I ask her. “Multiply that by 17 years.”     I ended up staying in Tudor City for the next two weeks until I was curtly told via text message "Cut the cord!”.  I was being ridiculous, I know, but I just did not want to face the task ahead of me. 

How can I put the feelings I had into words while I shuffled through cartons I had boxed up in August 2007 and left in a Pasadena storage facility?  "Simultaneously detached and eerily present" is what comes to mind.  In fact, it was rather overwhelming.  Life has happened.  Things have changed. I’m different. And that I’ve been an unapologetic transient… it feels like I’ve been moving for years.


I keep trying to believe what people tell me, that this will be fresh start, that all of my efforts and energy will come back to me, but I can’t seem to drink the Kool-Aid just yet. It seems like such a monumental effort, this moving, and I can't help but wistfully think of Gandhi and his shoebox.

What I’m finding are things particularly California-centric; a Stickley bed set, Catalina forged decorative tiles, Plein Art oils of the Cambria coast, a rare pattern of Franciscan ware called “Forget Me Not “ as if lulling me back to the west coast. 

All of this fit pretty nicely into that life over there - wide-open space and suburban cityscape, that way out west across the Painted Desert, the blur of colored lights in the middle of nowhere, the cragged ragged crags of the Sierras changing color with every hour of every day.   This is what my boxes contain. The light.   I miss the light, which is especially poignant given we’ve barely had two days of sun during all of February, March and the first two weeks of April.

Don't get me wrong, I love living in New York.  Every day I’m on the move, walking to and from and sometimes nowhere and I am always glad to be here. But I although the reason why I ended up here is a happy accident, I can’t say that moving is happy making.

It just brings up too many questions that wake me out of a restless sleep, overwhelming me at unseemly hours like 3:AM.   Questions that range from morbid, (“Do I really need these photos albums? Someone is just going to throw them out when I die”) to angry (“Why is the square footage constantly wrong on the apartment listings? This apartment is definitely NOT 350 SF.  Note to self – in NYC, always deduct at least 100 sf from what the listing states!), to despair masking as existential (“What am I doing here?”) This can be interpreted on both levels of spiritual to practical to a sack full of self-doubt. I mean, really, what am I doing here in this dark, studio apartment?   “Where do I belong?” Hawaii? Could I live there? I’ve always wanted to live in Spain. Why did I sign this lease?”)

Over the next six weeks, I slowly find a place for everything, come up with creative shelving, hunt down Crate & Barrel bargains on Craig’s List and make several trips to IKEA in Paramus, Elizabeth and Red Hook. 

After four years, I finally I have all my things in one place, with the exception of my Peter Beard signed print that is stowed in someone’s garage in Los Angeles.  For the first time in many years, I don't feel like my life is one big diaspora.


I'm further downsized and compact, and this apartment, which I refer to as The Garden, is really super cute.  My landlord is actually a very nice man, (although his wife tends to light into him every other day).  The Yankees fan across the hall is a complete stoner, so much so that there are times when I arrive home and MY apartment smells like pot. The light in my bathroom is yet to be fixed, but as Victoria reminds me, "Kat, this is New York - we've been waiting for our landlord to fix a lamp in our apartment for eight years!". 

And truly, I was tremendously happy to see those books, covered in plastic acid-free wrappers, a weekend project I’m grateful for as I see how badly the movers have handled everything despite my careful labeling.  I remembered all of my friends, gleefully recalling where and when I had found certain prizes while I examine the spines and page through to my favorite passages.


As I was lying awake one night, with those eternal questions zipping through my brain, this one popped in “Am I to be toting around these heavy boxes of books and curios all my days, items consolidated over time constituting my life? They are so heavy!”  I considered selling them.  It was Gandhi and that little box, whom I admired so much more as I shuffled these boxes from one end of the room to the other, but a friend advised that one day I would find that house and I’d want my books around me then. 


And so … even though the trips to yet a new storage unit, this one in Brooklyn, are bewildering, I know there is another move in my future.

For now, I'm waiting for the sun to come out and enjoying the lovely little space I've created.





Shameless Crushes...

find life experiences and swallow them whole.
travel.
meet many people.
go down some dead ends and explore dark alleys.
try everything.
exhaust yourself in the glorious pursuit of life.
-lawrence k. fish

Yoga For Peace

read much and often

Cleopatra: A Life
Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Never Let Me Go
The Angel's game
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Bel-Ami
Dreaming in French: A Novel
The Post-Birthday World
A Passage to India
The Time Traveler's wife
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Catcher in the Rye
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Kite Runner
Eat, Pray, Love
Slaughterhouse-Five
Les Misérables
The Lovely Bones
1984
Memoirs of a Geisha


read much and often»