The Longest Move
by Pat Devine
During the month of August, 2008 I moved out of my apartment of six years. I got rid of some things, sold my bed and a few other items, and the rest I boxed up and stored in a friend’s garage. For the next three and a half months I traveled the country in a series of cars I bought for $500—but that’s a different story. I returned to L.A. and moved my stuff from my friend’s garage to public storage and I spent the year of 2009 subletting and visiting and piecing things together. Finally on December 31, 2009 I signed a one-year lease to a new apartment. So even though my last apartment was in Glendale and this one is in Burbank, in some ways, it was the longest of moves.
There’s no dignity in moving.
It starts with your possessions. No matter how nice your things are, the moment you begin a move your stuff—the stuff you’ve worked a lifetime accumulating, the stuff you at some point couldn’t see yourself living well without—all that stuff becomes referred to as “your shit.”
“You get your shit out yet?”
“What are you going to do with that shit?”
“Man, you still got a lot of shit!”
It goes on. I suppose a lot of my stuff is shit. All of my furniture was either handed down to me or found on a street curb. Still it bothers me a little when someone refers to my stuff as “shit.” Of course, by the end of the move I was not only referring to it as “my shit” but often as “my fucking shit.”
If your stuff isn’t shit before a move, a good deal of it is after a move. Doorways and car trunks and storage facilities and all the other obstacles have a way of gashing, scratching, and tearing anything not packed in eight inches of bubble wrap. Only an earthquake can turn your stuff to shit faster than a move. What about a fire, you ask? Maybe. But a fire can actually add value to your shit. An item you hated before a fire becomes your most prized possession when found amongst the ruins. “Look, that thing I always hated! It survived the fire! I can’t tell you how much this porcelain Tweedy Bird from a horrible trip to Mexico now means to me.”
Anything you have to move falls into one of two categories: There are those things you need and there are those things you have either an emotional or intellectual attachment to. If I come across an old magazine article I’d saved, I’ll read the whole thing and the ads too. If I find notes I’d written to myself I’ll go through some unexplainable process of trying to figure out whether I should save the note, where I should save the note, and maybe even add new notes to the old notes. If I find an old birthday card from my Grandma I’ll scold myself for not writing her back and if I find an old Christmas card from a friend I’ll wonder whether it’s bad form to throw out a picture of his baby’s first visit with Santa. Before I know it, the day is gone and I’m more disorganized than I was when I started. So for that reason I didn’t start packing for my move until the last possible moment.
This system works fairly well until the second half of the move takes place—unpacking. Unpacking these boxes from a year and a half ago, I haven’t been merely unpacking disorganized items, I’ve been unpacking my own scattered thinking. I’ve not only been unpacking my stuff, I’ve been unpacking my shit.
I’m not good at getting rid of things. I did the best I could in ’08, but now after basically living out of a duffel bag for over a year the process has become easier. But I’m in no position to be generous and simply give things away. No, I have to try and make a buck. With the very modest ambition of making enough money to fill up my gas tank, I went into a used clothing store in Silver Lake with a large garbage bag full of clothes and about ten items on hangers. I left that same store with a large garbage bag full of clothes and about ten items on hangers. When I moved to L.A. more than a decade ago it was not unusual to hear people tell me I’d have to get used to rejection. I had no way of knowing the depths that these rejections would reach as I stood in this used clothing establishment being told by a scraggly looking woman that my clothes were not in good enough condition to buy. I was being told my stuff was shit in a whole new way.
My former apartment was barely a one bedroom, but my current one is a single. Living in a single apartment over the age of thirty is a loud declaration to the world that sexual intercourse is not a top priority in one’s life. I have found living in a single apartment even ruins one’s sexual fantasies. I imagine bringing home a lovely vixen, things are going well, and then she asks, “Where’s the bedroom?’
I try to play it off. “Bedroom, oh, ah—no, this is a loft.” It’s not long, though, before I’m arguing, “Well, if you’re so shallow that you require of your lovers a living room, kitchen, bathroom, and a whole other room then I guess I’m not the guy for you.”
Few things offer the chance for a new beginning like the New Year, and nothing offers the chance like a new home. So I’ve started my new year by following all the self-help wisdom I can handle: I get enough sleep, but not too much sleep. I’m eating right and exercising daily. I even do daily affirmations. Affirmations are basically declarations that it’s opposite day. I tell myself, “I am successful, I am productive, I am h—h—h—happy,” and finally, as I roll out my sleeping bag for the night I tell myself, “I do have my shit together.”
he’s creating a website at http://breakingdowninamerica.com.
E-mail: bdia@mac.com
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