...earlier today was surprised at how sad I felt...having parked the moving truck, biked away to yoga class for a break from all that....then, hours later, everything moved but the grime exhausted scrubbing couldn’t seem to make disappear...looking at bare white walls of a place where I’ve lived for two years...no, wait a second...it’s later than that, now...keys are in the building manager’s drop box...need to change tense from present perfect to past: I lived there for two years...but don’t anymore....door’s locked and I no longer have any way of getting in...
...just one in a long series of places...none too spectacular...don’t think I could provide a street address for any of them...which is just as well....places are ephemeral...not good to get too attached to them...not even those given that most greatly revered title of home...
....though I lived in the same house for almost all of my childhood, and off and on during early adulthood...even if I didn’t feel very at home, then...and my mom still lives there....in fact, I’m visiting her as I write this, in my old bedroom...same stuff on the walls...some of it, at least, though it’s decaying fast...a greeting card drawing of a dog that looks like Mittens, our Welsh Corgi, when I was a kid...a yellowed newspaper review of the Who concert I saw in 1982...a postcard with a picture of Gumbi with what looks like a napkin wrapped around him and a caption reading: Mahatma Gumbhi Man of Peace...a program from the production of West Side Story in which I played a small part senior year...tonight, tonight won’t be just any night, tonight there will be no morning star...
...then, places are also perspectives...especially when those places are homes...the ceiling fan I saw and sometimes heard first thing in the morning...the trees and parking lot out the window...the particular distance to bathroom and kitchen...all gone...or soon to be someone else’s...
...the house where I grew up is surrounded by trees...and I can’t imagine what it’d be like to grow up somewhere that wasn't...
...when I was in high school, my family flew in to Mexico City, then drove to Puebla and Oaxaca through the mountains...twisty, narrow mountain roads with trucks that moved so slowly, my dad would have to pass them...a cliff on the other side, if he misjudged....most of the trip was truly beautiful, but what’ll always stick with me most was what we saw on the way out of Mexico City...my attention, I think, first drawn away from whatever I was reading or the music on my Sony Walkman by an incredible rancid odor...and I looked out the window to see a mountain of garbage, and people all over it, foraging for whatever they might find...and, around it, a seemingly endless sea of dingy, crumbling grey in which countless human beings lived....I’d thought I knew what the word slum meant before then but I was mistaken...and as we drove on, it continued, for mile after mile....I really can’t imagine what it’d be like to grow up there....
...lately, my perspective has simply tended to be filled with clutter...papers all over every surface and spilling onto the floor, and other crap lying around everywhere...crumpled things I didn’t feel like picking up all around the corner trash cans...dirty laundry in a pile by the bed....was really somewhat shocked to see the quantity of dust in every corner, along every wall, underneath every piece of furniture....
...and clutter, clearly, is a problem in my perspective...as is junk...and ugly residue that sticks and needs to be washed...and all the tiny motes, fragments of sloughed off skin that should’ve been allowed to blow away long ago...
...my new home is nothing but clutter at this point...and I’m really not sure where exactly I’m gonna put stuff...except for the small room in front, where I told Jason, the friend who kindly helped with the move, not to put anything, and where I lay down only my little moon and stars rug, a couple of small art objects, an incense holder, and a few selected books...an attempt at leaving one small part of my new place largely open and uncluttered...it’s a start...
