After seven months of planning, saving, angling, thirteen boxes, and 170 pounds of luggage, I've finally moved to New York.
Moving is the best and worst of everything in life. There's nothing more exciting than starting again; going to a new place and fighting to figure out how you will fit into it. And there are few things as dispiriting as seeing everything you own reduced to a pile of banker’s boxes and black duffel bags. All the excitement and anticipation is framed in a fearful vertigo.
I've made a lot of major moves in my life and I remember the night before each, staring at the final collection of luggage. That's it, that's all I have. This is my only remaining physical footprint, and I have to strap it to my back now and heft it to the airport and fling it into the unknown.
I stayed up all night both times before I left for Peace Corps. The first night I stayed up packing and repacking. When I left for Madagascar I spend the night at a friend's Halloween party and then drove back to my parents house at 4AM. I had a 9AM flight and I decided to make some coffee and stay up the last few hours playing a game called Super Mario Sunshine.
The night before I left for New York, I stayed up till close to midnight wrestling my bags. Then I gave up and went to sleep. My mattress had been recycled so I slept on a yoga mat in my friend's apartment in Berkeley. I had strange dreams all night. In one I was in a symphony hall that turned into a dormitory. My ex-girfriend from China was there and I wandered around trying to find a free bunk to sleep in.
In another dream I was having sex with someone I'd never seen before, standing up and with her leg propped across my waist. I kept waking up every hour, checking my cell phone to see what time it was, paranoid I would oversleep. I got up at 5:15AM, minutes before I had set the alarm to go off.
I felt awkward on the train, my four big pieces of luggage sticking out amidst the early morning commuters. I felt numb and wished I had caffeine. I kept imaging the cheap duffel bag I bought for $8.99 in the Mission ripping open along it's bulging seams, spilling all my belongings into the aisle.
The worst part of moving is the uncertainty. Even in moving to a city I've been to before, headed for an apartment I've spent lots of time in, it still felt like everything was up in the air; a photograph of someone throwing a bucketful of water into the air, the globby particles suspended in motion above the ground.
All those feelings are useless, bouncing around in an entropic vacuum with nothing but speculation to keep them in check. They all feel so immediate and crucial in those hours in flux, suspended between two points on a map, strung out on a piece of yarn connecting them. As soon as you land, they become absurd, disconnected from the daily realities of wherever you wind up.
I had no way of anticipating Los Angeles, Prague, China, Madagascar, San Francisco, and now New York.
And now here I am. To begin. And begin again.
Previous Posts:
Date Machine: Old Love Letters, or Things That Got Thrown Away in the Move
Sex Machine: Talking About Sex With Your Parents
Love Machine: Willing to Relocate
Sex Machine: Checking my Oil, or the HIV Test
Date Machine: How To Pick Up a Bartender
Date Machine: Are You My Girlfriend Now?
PDA Machine: Making Out in a Bar
Sex Machine: The Cake is a Lie, or Does My Butt Show When I Walk?
Obituary Machine: Natasha Richardson, or Smoking Cigarettes on the Roof
Love Machine: Throwing Punches, or Get Your Hands Off of My Woman
Date Night: The Most Expensive Date I've Ever Been On
Sex Machine: Monogamy is for Losers
Sex Machine: I'm Not That Kind of Girl
Date Machine: Civil War and Sex on a Toliet
Date Machine: Living Like a Bachelor
Sex Machine: Chest Hair, or the Shaved Eunuch