wrapping dishes in old copies of NME
In university, everything I owned fit in the trunk and back seats of my car. In the summer between my junior and senior year, I spent the first week squatting in abandoned dorm rooms and couch surfing with friends in JP while looking for an apartment and a job. It was in the midst of that period, as I drove from JP back to Wellesley, that I realized that I had everything I needed in my car, and nothing holding me to the city, and that I could very well drive to New York, Chicago or Los Angeles, and setup shop there just as easily as here.
I had an apartment lined up shortly before graduation, and even then, moving in consisted of unloading the trunk of my car, and hauling a few books, some CDs and a laptop into an empty bedroom. The mere act of buying a futon and selecting a frame seemed like a significantly adult choice, as did my first acquisitions of a desk and a couch. Furniture was a sign of permanence because I couldn't just pack it into my car and disappear.
Last month, I decided that, after three years in Brookline and with LittleSister moving back to California, I would move. The last few weeks have been a minor blur of firming up details with my new place (moving in with silas7 in case any of you were wondering), cancelling my utilities, and, of course, packing. Lots of packing.
Since college, I've acquired the sorts of possessions that now require a 14 foot U-haul van instead of just the backseat of a sedan. I have a tv, bookcases, bureaus, coffee tables, dinner tables, and a desk with an assembly procedure that requires a masters in Mechanical Engineering. I have stacks of books wrapped up carefully in twine and a CD collection that sprawls across multiple boxes of varying size. I'm still opening cabinets and closets and discovering piles of video cable that I stashed in a fit of cleaning, a shoebox of cassettes that I have not opened since I moved in here, and old issues of Wired magazine circa 19-fucking-94.
The Wired issues, as well as my sister's old copies of NME have found a second life as packing material for my dishes and glass ware1. But that's all after I burn about an hour scanning through old articles, laughing quietly at the outdated hype. "Iridium will change the world!" "Oasis is the Second Coming of God!" "We're looking at 25 years of prosperity!" And if I had more time, I'd linger over the envelopes of old letters and the stacks of old notebooks leftover from school. Instead, I just chuck these into new boxes of sturdier cardboard and tell myself I'll look over the rest of it later, after I moved in.
I realize that I need to pare down what I'll take with me, to keep my packrat tendencies in check, and in some cases it's easy, like choosing to discard the obsolete tech manuals (How to Write HTML 3.2 in Six Days, anyone?). Others are infinitely more difficult. Notes of thanks scribbled on little post-its , old ticket stubs, tiny toys given by friends just because -- these things I cannot part with, eventhough I only look at them once in a long while. They're tied to memories that I can't discard quite yet, and somehow, over the past few years, the life as told in the sum of these memories has played a larger role in keeping me in this city than any piece of furniture ever could.
1 my folks are in town to help with moving and celebrate LittleSister's graduation. Tuesday night, I had my mom pack my pantry away, and her eyes scanned the wine bottles quietly, then she asked, "why do you have so many bottles of sake?"
"Had a sushi party once, mom, and I have generous friends."
Then she opened the fridge and saw the three bottles of champagne and before she asked me anything, I already said, "Brunch. Same generous friends."