a note on moving

There is never a time when moving is not a huge ordeal. Perhaps the most frustrating thing about it is packing up your stuff, putting years of accumulated junk into boxes (or, the flimsier alternative: brown paper bags from the grocery store -- and then feeling like a dopey old bag lady!), and, upon assessing all that you've done, believing you still haven't accomplished very much. That's how I feel today, even though my dresser drawers and cabinets are empty, even though my kitchen has been cleaned out, even though my clothes for the rest of the week are in yet another flimsy paper bag on my floor. Only my computer, the wireless internet, and my cell phone charger are plugged in, and everything is much quieter than usual in my neighborhood. It must mean my departure is near.

My walls aren't bare yet, though. I couldn't stand the thought of completely giving up my apartment before the official end-date, so these gray and white cartoons from some televised animated detective story are still hanging in their frames. They make the place look less frightening, less not-mine.

It's strange that this place has been the site of so many of my own memories, and that I will think of my early twenties as being anchored to this place. But, of course, I'm not the only one who has lived here and called this place home; many others had before me. And, soon, it will be someone else's, and the walls will be bare again for whoever that person is and his/her new beginning. My cartoons and I will be somewhere else. And hopefully by then I will have recycled these wretched paper bags.