As moving day approaches
This week I am packing boxes and bags for another move. This time it's further than across town, I'm going to Washington, DC. I'm leaving Boston because I have lived here for seven great years and now it's time for a change. But I chose Washington because my heart and my love are there.
Today I'm attempting to get a price quote and book a move with an affordable company. I just looked at one called Starving Students, their website opens with a giant 18-wheeler. I imagine it to be full of everything you could find in a two-thousand-square-foot house.
All day today I have been waiting for Salvation Army to come and pick up what furniture and clothing I haven't already given away. They only collect on Tuesdays, the operator said they'll be coming sometime between breakfast and dinner. A truck just pulled up in front of my apartment, but it looks to be a new furniture delivery.
About fifteen minutes ago I pulled my back lifting a box of books.
All of this packing and purging has been sort of a meditation for me. I think about how humans are the only creatures, other than snails and hermit crabs, to carry their belongings with them. We need so much to live comfortably, and some, like me, need more than others. There are clothes to keep warm and decent, books and DVD's to distract the mind, pots and pans for preparing hypothetical meals, and pictures, pounds of them, preserving memories just in case my own fails me. Then, as I have changed, some of these items become arbitrary, excess weight to tow.
Watching "Winged Migration" a couple of weeks ago, I was amazed at how birds all over the world leave behind their nests and take flight, not stopping for thousands of miles. Nothing, not even their bones, weigh them down. They live on the food they find and look to each other for protection. It seems like such a foreign concept to one filling her days with boxes and their contents.
Today I'm attempting to get a price quote and book a move with an affordable company. I just looked at one called Starving Students, their website opens with a giant 18-wheeler. I imagine it to be full of everything you could find in a two-thousand-square-foot house.
All day today I have been waiting for Salvation Army to come and pick up what furniture and clothing I haven't already given away. They only collect on Tuesdays, the operator said they'll be coming sometime between breakfast and dinner. A truck just pulled up in front of my apartment, but it looks to be a new furniture delivery.
About fifteen minutes ago I pulled my back lifting a box of books.
All of this packing and purging has been sort of a meditation for me. I think about how humans are the only creatures, other than snails and hermit crabs, to carry their belongings with them. We need so much to live comfortably, and some, like me, need more than others. There are clothes to keep warm and decent, books and DVD's to distract the mind, pots and pans for preparing hypothetical meals, and pictures, pounds of them, preserving memories just in case my own fails me. Then, as I have changed, some of these items become arbitrary, excess weight to tow.
Watching "Winged Migration" a couple of weeks ago, I was amazed at how birds all over the world leave behind their nests and take flight, not stopping for thousands of miles. Nothing, not even their bones, weigh them down. They live on the food they find and look to each other for protection. It seems like such a foreign concept to one filling her days with boxes and their contents.