Somewhat moved
Comments: 15
I guess we can say that we’ve moved into the new place, given that all our stuff was carted over and we’ve been sleeping here for a week. I wouldn’t quite say we’ve settled in yet — that takes time and the rearrangement of various synapses — but we’re here, the new family in the neighbourhood.
On a radio show many years ago I heard an interview with a psychologist in which she said that three of the most traumatic things people go through are deaths in the family (naturally), getting married (not sure whether she meant preparations for the ceremony and reception or the slow-burn trauma that is life with another person), and moving house.
I didn’t find the move disconcerting at all, probably because my wife did most of the work (she was very untraumatic: highly organised and energetic). In fact I was surprised, considering the sentimental gusto with which I loved our old house, at how quickly it ceased to feel like our house at all. As we packed everything up and the rooms came merely to hold cardboard boxes rather than our lives, the house returned bit by bit to a Platonic state of house-ness, grubbier, yes, for the decade we’d spent there, but abstract and kind of ghostly.
With each book I removed from the shelves I felt like David Bowman unplugging HAL’s memory modules towards the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Something wound down and faded, but you couldn’t call it a living thing. We were the living things, and we were on our way to a new place, and our memories were coming with us.
This is quite possibly a not terribly advanced defense mechanism intended to protect against the very trauma the radio psychologist identified. A lifetime of practice has made me quite an expert at denial and repression after all. But if so, then so be it. I miss the old house like I miss my childhood: terribly, but I wouldn’t go back.
In the series of equations that define habitation, some operands have changed — increased here, decreased there — and now we get to refactor the whole experience (with a lot more space in which to do it, I should add) and see what answers we come up with.
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Posted to General Rants 2005.08.29 (Mon) • 21:48
Comments
Posted by Evan Jones 2005.08.30, 00:55
A beautiful post, long awaited.
Posted by Evan Jones 2005.08.30, 01:01
I was also thinking that a nice title for the photo might be, “The Three Little Pears at Home in Their Now Bigger House.”
Posted by Zelnox 2005.08.30, 10:32
Ahhhh, I love that photo! Cozy. ^_^
Posted by Lil 2005.08.30, 11:29
Good luck settling into your new home. Love the photo - olivey minimal goodness! Look forward to catching up when the dust clears!
Posted by Natalie 2005.08.30, 12:33
I think they are gourds or squashes :) (pumpkins)
Beautiful post, beautiful photo.
I’ve always found moving to be cathartic. A way to remove the deadwood from my life and clean the slate.
Posted by jh 2005.08.31, 00:28
Thanks, Evan (and others for the nice comments) — yes, they’re gourds (hyoutan). I bought a small specimen recently with three pods on it but it died just before we moved. I had an image of gourdly sturdiness but it turns out they’re quite temperamental. Seems they like lots of water promptly delivered. Anyway, I snipped the gourds and brought them over.
The wall is the wall behind my desk, the one I look at when I’m not looking at my monitor. Like all good walls it changes colour depending on the time of day and the quality of the outside light. We have shoji now, the sliding paper screens, and they are both beautiful and something of a nuisance. I’ll be writing more about them.
The wall has ranged from a sandy beige to an almost olive drab with a touch of sage in it. I can’t wait to see the room in winter.
Posted by Jeff 2005.08.31, 07:59
Like Natalie I have found moving to be cathartic. I get emotional with change. I remember my last night in one apartment. It must have been 25 years ago. But that night is still very clear to me.
But I also adapt rather quickly once I’m in my new abode and the new becomes warm and familiar.
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens 2005.08.31, 08:38
My dad was in the military so moving house was our way of life. I’ve been reading a lot of blogs lately concerned with a sense of place, and I realized that as a child I carried my sense of place with me like a portable altar. I could transform every new place into my place. I suppose this was due in part to having a few special objects, books, photos, and other talismans that I imbued with a feeling of home. Unpack them. Set them up. And there I was. Home again.
Sounds like you’re on your way.
Posted by Tiffany 2005.09.02, 08:02
What a beautiful post! Very nicely captures the ‘bigness’ that’s at the heart of seemingly everyday events.
Posted by new age 2005.09.03, 23:42
Very cool picture!
Posted by Carl 2005.09.04, 02:48
Well done on the move JH, qre you having a housewarming? I’ve just moved from the UK to France and I agree; moving anywhere is stressful. The new appartment, however, feels much more homely now my stuff is out of the boxes.
Posted by kevin 2005.09.06, 16:53
I don’t know if “traumatic” is the word, but moving and getting married certainly would cause a lot of stress. And in some cases, such as having a child, “stress” is not necessarily a bad thing, but in terms of physiological reaction, it is the same (give or take a few stress points) as loosing your job.
I remember taking a stress test in my psych class. It asked a couple pages of questions such as “have you moved in the past two years?”, “has someone in your family died in the past five years”, “has your car broken down in the past month?”, “have you had a child in the past year?”, “have you graduated school…” etc…
Basically anything that is a change from your normal life is a cause of stress. The test assigned points for every event that caused some type of stress, and the sum total of the points was your “stress level”. Of course you subtract points for exercise and yoga and what not.
My point: It was really interesting.
Posted by David Kornahrens 2005.09.07, 02:11
I think moving is fun, but somewhat tedious work. Not one person wants to move, and not find anything. A person must be really tedious in their organizational skills, or the move will become a job, instead of a re-arrangement.
Posted by Rick Peters 2005.09.09, 14:52
Oh i don’t take it as fun. It’s rather a pain.
Posted by Mr Beard 2007.03.08, 03:56
I spent a good 15 years of my life moving from one place to another, one country to another, loosing friends then gaining new - All to do with work mind - was great the first couple of years but it eventually gave me a feeling of not belonging anywhere or to anyone. I’ve finally come back to my ‘childhood’ home… A feeling of relief really. I don’t want to move again, ever.
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