Empty Apartment Blues
Have you ever noticed that an empty apartment echoes?
The movers came today and took all my stuff away, packing (or repacking, in most cases since I never really unpacked to begin with) all my dishes and books and stuff into boxes and carting it off to some generic warehouse in Texas. I'm actually quite thrilled that they did it instead of me, though I have to admit I felt extremely guilty plowing through a book silently in my roommate's old room while they taped and moved out in the rest of the place.
But then they finished and my apartment is so quiet that it's downright noisy.
Seriously, in a place with no furnishings to absorb the sounds of everyday life, the tiniest sound bounces off every now exposed surface--the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the windows. It's almost like standing on the edge of a great canyon and tossing a pebble in, just to hear it click-click-clack all the way down and then the sound just floating over the void. Stuck in the air.
That's exactly what my apartment is like.
I called EJG and told her how depressing it was and she kindly told me I could escape to the Castle to snuggle with the cat and watch TV there (I had forgotten how difficult life without both TV and Internet can be). I may take her up on it.
I think what's most frustrating about moving is just that transition period when all your stuff is somewhere else and you're stuck living out of a suitcase or a car. Rationally, I know it's just stuff and you really don't need it to make it from day to day. But there is something very comforting about a mattress that already knows the contours of your body. Of a chair that's just perfect for reading. Of dishes you've used to serve friends in meals past.
Stuff, for some reason, is sometimes more than just stuff.
When we learned that my new company was going to pick up the tab for my upcoming cross-country move, my parents gave me several boxes of just such stuff from my old room at home. They cleaned out the room several years ago and boxed it all up for me to sort through once I landed somewhere a little more permanent. This apparently fit the bill.
As I started sorting through it, I realized most of it, I hadn't seen or thought about in years. I had forgotten I ever owned or used it, and now it was just stuff--sitting meaninglessly in boxes on my floor. I decided to just pitch it all. If I hadn't needed it up to now, why would I need it in Dallas?
Except when I told people--like my family, my best friend, even my best friend's mother--about the great pitch-a-thon, they recoiled. "You're just throwing it away?" (This led, of course, to some cleaner's guilt, and I have since rescued from the trash pile any photos from the stack as well as a few childhood memorabilia.)
Why do we attach ourselves so much so things--find comfort in stuff? Is it the things that are important? Is it the symbols of the things, the emotions and intentions behind them? Or just the memories attached to them? And if it is just the memories, why are we so hesitant to let the things go and savor the part we truly treasure?
I'll be the first to admit I've inherited my family's pack-rat gene. I hold on to stuff long past its expiration of usefulness. I'm not sure if it's the memories, or more the comfort of being surrounded by the familiar. I think it's this very reason that I begin to go a little stir crazy after about a week in a hotel--I begin to crave being surrounded by those little bits and pieces of me that I've collected and assembled. In some way, they are me. They represent the person I am.
Thank the heavens that this transition is a short one. With any luck, I will be settled in Dallas in just a short month and can once again surround myself with the familiar stuff. Mixing the old with the new. Makes the new just a little bit easier.
The movers came today and took all my stuff away, packing (or repacking, in most cases since I never really unpacked to begin with) all my dishes and books and stuff into boxes and carting it off to some generic warehouse in Texas. I'm actually quite thrilled that they did it instead of me, though I have to admit I felt extremely guilty plowing through a book silently in my roommate's old room while they taped and moved out in the rest of the place.
But then they finished and my apartment is so quiet that it's downright noisy.
Seriously, in a place with no furnishings to absorb the sounds of everyday life, the tiniest sound bounces off every now exposed surface--the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the windows. It's almost like standing on the edge of a great canyon and tossing a pebble in, just to hear it click-click-clack all the way down and then the sound just floating over the void. Stuck in the air.
That's exactly what my apartment is like.
I called EJG and told her how depressing it was and she kindly told me I could escape to the Castle to snuggle with the cat and watch TV there (I had forgotten how difficult life without both TV and Internet can be). I may take her up on it.
I think what's most frustrating about moving is just that transition period when all your stuff is somewhere else and you're stuck living out of a suitcase or a car. Rationally, I know it's just stuff and you really don't need it to make it from day to day. But there is something very comforting about a mattress that already knows the contours of your body. Of a chair that's just perfect for reading. Of dishes you've used to serve friends in meals past.
Stuff, for some reason, is sometimes more than just stuff.
When we learned that my new company was going to pick up the tab for my upcoming cross-country move, my parents gave me several boxes of just such stuff from my old room at home. They cleaned out the room several years ago and boxed it all up for me to sort through once I landed somewhere a little more permanent. This apparently fit the bill.
As I started sorting through it, I realized most of it, I hadn't seen or thought about in years. I had forgotten I ever owned or used it, and now it was just stuff--sitting meaninglessly in boxes on my floor. I decided to just pitch it all. If I hadn't needed it up to now, why would I need it in Dallas?
Except when I told people--like my family, my best friend, even my best friend's mother--about the great pitch-a-thon, they recoiled. "You're just throwing it away?" (This led, of course, to some cleaner's guilt, and I have since rescued from the trash pile any photos from the stack as well as a few childhood memorabilia.)
Why do we attach ourselves so much so things--find comfort in stuff? Is it the things that are important? Is it the symbols of the things, the emotions and intentions behind them? Or just the memories attached to them? And if it is just the memories, why are we so hesitant to let the things go and savor the part we truly treasure?
I'll be the first to admit I've inherited my family's pack-rat gene. I hold on to stuff long past its expiration of usefulness. I'm not sure if it's the memories, or more the comfort of being surrounded by the familiar. I think it's this very reason that I begin to go a little stir crazy after about a week in a hotel--I begin to crave being surrounded by those little bits and pieces of me that I've collected and assembled. In some way, they are me. They represent the person I am.
Thank the heavens that this transition is a short one. With any luck, I will be settled in Dallas in just a short month and can once again surround myself with the familiar stuff. Mixing the old with the new. Makes the new just a little bit easier.
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