One of the random and always unexpected side effects of
efficient and effective unpacking is the sense you have on your first full day
alone in your new house that you’ve been there for almost a month already, and
shouldn’t you have found that job by now, and isn’t it laundry day, and why
haven’t you got a trash can for the bathroom yet?
The part where it is Monday is no great help. Monday brings
with it the sense of getting around to doing things: phone calls and
appointments and ironing and accomplishment. It’s bad enough that it is also
the day that begins the working week in whatever way it damn well pleases, but
it shows up at your door with a bag of toys and tells you that you have to play
with them all by 1 pm or the week is worthless and you might as well call in
useless and never leave your bed. And we – we silly creatures – we listen!
Humans have no sense of when to just shift their
expectations. None. This is why we spend gajillions of dollars letting alien
life forms shaped as familiar looking human beings motivate and inspire and
organize us. They are the beings who understand how to change perspective. Not
we fragile, ego centered, water sensitive little things. Oh, to revel in a
hangover inducing constantly shifting kaleidoscope of human interaction and
points of view. Obi Wan would shit himself in bliss.
I’ve unpacked just more than half of my boxes and things
(when the hell, by the bye, did I acquire so much clothing?)(who the hell wears
that much stuff?)(where am I going to put it all?!?) and while I’m enjoying the
sheer randomness of my book arrangements and the ability to get to all of the
books that I brought with me, there is something lurking under the surface that
has been bubbling for the last 24 hours or so.
What’s with the stupid decisions we make? Not like buying a
house or getting married or having kids or picking one career, no. I mean like
having three cans of Cream of Tartar or 30 safety pins in no container or still
moving around the plant hanger bracket thingies that got left when the last
husband got kicked out. You know, the really stupid decisions. I own a bungee
cord that has the diameter of a bloated fly. It is tucked away in a box that
also holds extension cords and adapters and wonderful sorts of truly practical
and used items. I didn’t throw it away. I was in shock and decided to just
repack the useless with the useful and walk away from the whole thing like it
never happened.
Living in an apartment, especially when it is decided that
this will be a not permanent arrangement, has freed me up to make some
interesting calls about just how much of my sentimental keepsake kind of stuff
I’m going to keep around. It’s not getting thrown out, that’s just crazy talk.
There is room now in the file drawer for new files. Also, there is room on the
book shelves in case I buy a book sometime in the next 12 months. One
book. Yeah. That part’s going to suck.
Waking up this morning to curtain covered windows and books
on shelves and a table just waiting for me to sit at it with tea and a journal
and some breakfast and a delightful book (that hasn’t been checked out since
2003. Which is a crime, if you ask me. I’ve read the book before, and find it
informative and gentle and humorous. Other people should be reading it as well.
But there is no place for me to add a review and encourage other people to read
it. Perhaps I will just suck it up and throw reviews up everywhere other than
the library’s catalog. But that would be far too reasonable.) was kind of
unnerving, and has lead in no small part to the general sense of pressure
expressed above. Even though I know (a lot) that today is my first full day of
the rest of my life. It is not possible to get everything done RightNow. And it
shouldn’t be tried. Gentleness is advocated by the cats and friends and
sometimes even other people. Patience is what it is usually called. But
Gentleness allows me time to clean the apartment and use the time I have as I
will find joyful and rewarding.
Last night’s entertainment involved not closely watching a
Sherlock Holmes mystery on the TV. The tape played some of the sound and most
of the picture. Not enough to be watchable, but it got me thinking about the
kinds of things that the stuff in one’s home says about how time in it is
spent. Informationally speaking, of course, not with value judgment or to
determine how handy you will be at distracting Aunty Lydia
It does make the still packed boxes that much more
intriguing to me, pretending that I can see my life objectively – truth be
told, though, we’ve all known those moments of re-definition when stuff that’s
been yours and then has been in a box suddenly returns to you and we all know
how disconcerting it can be to see the things of your life as if on a list of
characteristics. I like opening them and wondering just what inspired me to put
that cake pan in with the typewriter and why are there so many scarves in with
the shampoo and will I ever actually need those movie ticket stubs?
It is probably best that this is a thought that simmers and
occasionally vanishes altogether. There are still boxes of bits and ends and
old magazines and lengths of fabric to deal with in something like a rational
manner. And now that I know where the Cream of Tartar is, I can avoid buying
more.
I should probably see if I can find an alien life form to
help.
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