Inexplicable, Implausible

I rarely lose things. Sure, I've been known to misplace things, for minutes, hours, day, weeks or months at a time. Inevitably, most of these temporarily missing items reappear when I least expect them to. At those moments I breathe a sigh of relief, both for not having completely lost my mind and for the restoration of the object to my life. But it has been months since a new, high quality black moisture wicking t-shirt has gone missing; after checking the washer and dryer I use in the basement of my art studio building, I went through all of my drawers, peered under my bed, ransacked my closet, and checked the lost and found at my yoga studio. Nada. It had disappeared. For awhile I tortured myself over my possible carelessness - maybe I had let my laundry linger in the washing machine and someone had helped themselves while I was upstairs, making art. And then I realized that I should not cause myself to suffer over a t-shirt, even if I had snagged it for just $15 at the GoLite gear sale shortly after moving to Colorado. Eventually I moved on, or so I thought.

But this morning, while getting dressed for a hike, I was looking for the sports bra I had purchased at that same gear sale and could not find it. I had just done a load of laundry at my studio and it was not among the clothing that I had scooped from the dryer and placed into my nylon laundry bag. Not again?! I chose something else to wear and left for the day. Returning to my apartment in the late afternoon, I found myself obsessing over this second missing piece of athletic gear, the same brand as that t-shirt. Not wishing to wait another day to possibly solve this mystery, I walked to my studio building this evening to check the washer and dryer. Both were empty.

My brain is trying to devise an explanation for the fact that two pieces of GoLite gear have vanished within in a few months of one another under similar circumstances. While it is possible that someone has helped themselves to my laundry, I can't imagine who it would be. Most of the artists in my building rarely venture into the basement, where the machines are located, and none of them are my size, not to mention that I have no basis to distrust them. And there have been more valuable pieces of clothing available for the picking, so even if someone were sneaking around and harvesting my stuff, why wouldn't they take more or different things?

Realizing I could drive myself crazy attempting to recover these items, I am going to try (again) to let go of these perplexing episodes, following the advice suggested by the brand itself. I will "GoLite", moving ahead without being bogged down by the mystery of my missing clothes.

Introducing another Blog

New situations demand new blogs, so I've created a blog in which to reflect upon certain aspects of my experiences in Colorado. Please visit Adventures with Altitude to read about cultural and climactic differences and the occasional quirky observation about life at 5,280 feet.

For a change of pace, on this new blog the titles of posts begin with a variety of letters, not just "I", and often contain more than just a word or two. Do check it out I will be keeping this blog, too, and cross referencing posts when it makes sense to do so.

Thanks for reading, and please don't be shy about leaving comments on either blog.

Intact, Incense

Yesterday morning my relocube, a large metal storage unit containing most of my earthly possessions, was delivered to my parking spot near the apartment building I now live in. The driver, a man with pale skin, a white beard, twinkly eyes and a laid back manner, was the same person who had brought my studio relocube a few weeks earlier. Seeing him again was like seeing an old friend. As had happened previously, not only did he spend several minutes with me discussing the optimum positioning of my cube for easiest unloading, he also lingered for some small talk after he had used his forklift to deposit the cube in the perfect spot. Despite his full day of deliveries and pickups, this man did not act as if he were in a hurry. He seemed quite relaxed, unlike most delivery people I had encountered on the East Coast.

Then I got on Craigslist to find some movers to unload the cube. By mid-afternoon the crew showed up; the first guy to arrive, a 36-year old fellow with craggy good looks, a pack of cigarettes in the sleeve of his shirt and a prosthetic leg from a drunk-driving accident in his teens, apologized for his somewhat disheveled appearance, saying that he hadn't been planning to work that day. It didn't bother me that he showed up in jeans and a t-shirt (he's moving stuff, after all), but as he worked up a sweat carting boxes up to my apartment it became clear that he probably hadn't showered in the preceding few days. His exertions released an increasingly foul odor in my apartment. I turned the ceiling fan on the highest speed and opened all the windows, hoping that would help. This man was also ingratiatingly and somewhat aggressively polite, insisting on calling me Ma'am at every opportunity despite my protestations.

"Whatever you say, Ma'am"
"No problem, Ma'am"
"Where should I put this, Ma'am?"
"We'll take care of everything, Ma'am"
"Thank you, Ma'am"
"Ma'am, do you mind if I take this call?"

After being Ma'am-ed to death over the course of nearly three hours I wanted to strangle him...except that would have meant touching him.

Since then I've unpacked about two-thirds of the boxes and so far all of my belongings are intact, even if the containers they were in got somewhat bit bent out of shape. It's been a month since I've seen all of my stuff and in the meantime I had forgotten exactly what I had put in the relocube. Imagine my delight and relief a few minutes ago when I opened a box and discovered some cones of frangipani incense I purchased in Thailand a few years ago.

Things are starting to smell a lot better around here.

Interchange

My launching pad for my upcoming move is my mother's house. She has generously allowed me to fill her screened in porch and garage with the pared down contents of my studio and my apartment, which will soon be loaded onto two pods for transport to Colorado. Not knowing where exactly I'd be moving to, I have spent months slowly whittling down my possessions to only those things that I absolutely need, really love or can't easily replace.

The original idea was that I'd load up a trailer, attach it to my car and drive out with as little as possible. Then I learned that my car, with all wheel drive, is not really designed for towing, and that the trailer that it could safely carry wouldn't fit very much anyway. Not to mention that the installed trailer hitch was quite rusted and might not be terribly secure.

Plan B was to rent a truck, load up my belonging, attach my car onto a flatbed trailer behind it and drive the contraption out West. For many weeks I had a romantic attachment to the idea of a sola long-distance truck trip and I refused to consider other options. It seemed adventurous, a bit challenging, something that I wouldn't normally do...a way to step out of my box and signal the transition I am making. Then I regained my sanity and realized that renting, loading, driving and unloading a truck would probably be much more stressful, not to mention more expensive, than shipping my belongings in pods.

The pods changed the plan. On a per pod basis, it was cheaper to order two, rather than one, and since I am moving to two locations - an art studio first, and eventually an apartment or house, which I haven't found yet - it made sense to sort my belongings based on their destination. And as I am paying for two pods, I might as well fill them, rather than leaving each half full. Right...? Hmm.

Knowing that I have extra space, my mother has been wondering if I'd take back many of the items I've deposited at her house at other times when I've moved far away. It has become a bit of a ritual - she takes in my abandoned furnishings thinking that one day I might wish to be reunited with them. Her home sometimes looks like a museum of my past lives, filled with bookcases from two former apartments, tchotchkes I've collected overseas, lamps and wicker baskets I no longer needed or wanted, clothing that doesn't fit or suit me anymore, a love seat and a wooden chair. By and large I have refused to reclaim my old things, not wishing to be saddled with furniture for which I don't yet have a place, but over the weekend she was home cleaning, organizing and attempting to tempt me with her things - vintage Mexican baskets, pots and pans she found at a garage sale, her wet-dry vac.

No thanks, I said, to most of what was proposed for interchange, even if the items were perfectly good, useful or attractive. I wanted to try to hew to my initial vision of arrriving with as little as possible, even though my, ahem, minimalist holdings do occupy many boxes and take up several cubic feet. However, she did persuade me to adopt several blankets - useful for protecting furniture - a small boxed set of matching utensils and a small hooked rug with a butterfly design, something I made as a child. That reminded me of a vintage woolen rug from Mexico, also with a butterfly pattern, so I added that, too, to my pile....

When the pods arrive - supposedly soon - I will try to load and lock them as quickly as possible, preventing more things from stowing away to Colorado.

Intrinsic, Imbued

A few conversations I've had recently about moving and stuff have got me thinking, yet again, about what to keep and what to toss. A woman moving into the apartment below mine with her two children tells me that she has so much furniture and books that she needs two trucks. I told her that I am trying to pare down as much as I can, including giving away books that I haven't opened in years and will probably never read again. They are just taking up space. Her eyes widened.

"But," she protested, "My books are a record of my life. I see them on the shelf and I'm reminded of all the things I've done."

I used to have that philosophy about things, especially books, that they provide reference points for my life's trajectory, that I needed them around in order to remember who I was and therefore who I am. They are souvenirs of moments in time, the past made visible. Books are also friends and companions, something to turn to when needing wisdom, solace or entertainment. And it used to be that I'd feel more comfortable visiting a home lined or littered with books rather than being in a space devoid of such decorations - yes, a well-stocked bookshelf can be aesthetically pleasing.

And yet, as another friend pointed out, every object gives off a certain energy, a vibration with which we or someone else has imbued it. Most of the time this energy is not intrinsic to the object but has to do with the circumstances through which it entered our lives. How did it arrive? Was the book (or thing) a loving and thoughtful gift from a kind person or did it come with some strings attached, an implied criticism or aggressive suggestion for how to improve? As I look at my stuff, books included, I am trying to recall how they came into my possession. If I am no longer friends with the person who gave it to me, do I hang onto it? Do I want to be reminded of people that either drifted away from me or I from them? Lately the answer is no, even if at the time I received the item the friendship was a happy one. Do I want to hang onto a piece of clothing that I purchased in a gloomy moment and/or only because it was a bargain? Again, the answer is no. At some point, the accumulation of reminders of what was can stifle what is or what is becoming.

The issue gets more complicated when I'm dealing with other people's things, such as items from my father's house or that were acquired while my parents were still married. Some of these objects are beautiful to behold yet their vibration is not completely positive, a sadness clings to them. Do I keep them long enough to see if I can attach a happier story to them? Can I see them simply as objects and enjoy them on a purely aesthetic and functional level, forgetting their provenance? Or do I let them go and lighten my load, choosing to honor the past without schlepping its physical manifestations along with me?

I will ponder these questions some more as I take another stab at sorting my books and my stuff.

Incremental

Bit by bit, step by step, piece by piece. That is how things, people and lives are built. I'm discovering it is also how lives are taken apart, as I prepare to move a few thousand miles away. For a long time - longer than I care to admit - I haven't wanted to be where I am. My body was in one place, my spirit in another. Now I am trying to make it possible for my body and other material manifestations - as in, my stuff - to move to where my spirit would like us all to be: Colorado.

Even though I don't even have that much in the way of big stuff - for example, I do not own a television, couch, armchair, dresser or stereo system - the process of classifying and culling my belongings is time consuming and emotionally draining. I find I can only do a little bit of it at a time. I'm a collector and somewhat of a packrat, and it is hard for me to part with things such as postcards and greeting cards I've purchased on trips, small books received as gifts, ceramic objects from near and far. While these don't necessarily take up that much space, and I could easily dump them in a box and ship them, I am trying to be conscious of what I take with me, what I sell or give away and what I stick in the trash; so far, nothing I've found has qualified for a fifth option, being consumed by bonfre. So, for example, the partially used box of "Quotable Canine" notecards that I received at my department's holiday raffle in 1997 at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is, finally, OUT, in the "to be donated" pile. However, a half-consumed box of artsy cat notecards, a gift from my mother, is IN. Also in the OUT pile is "Food Values of Portions Commonly Used", a spiral bound volume I recovered from my father's home after he passed away. I will, on the other hand, be bringing my Hungarian cookbooks with me.

At my art studio the decision making has been difficult indeed. Which beads and mosaic materials to sell and which to keep? During the first pass through my stash I decided to keep any beads that I had purchased overseas or that had been part of a popular design. But those criteria left me with a large inventory and so I then reluctantly decided to sell some of the heavier and more expensive ones. In taking my studio apart, drawer by drawer, container by container, I came across even more beads and jewelry that I hadn't seen in years. I figured that if I had forgotten about them so easily, I wouldn't mind selling them and allowing others to enjoy them. But then someone would come into my studio, and ooh and aah over them, and for a moment I'd experience a pang of envy and want them for myself. The pang was particularly piquant when other jewelry designers came in to pick over my collection; I felt like I was watching vultures pluck the meat from the bones of my business. One woman, while scooping up some luscious glass beads, asked me if I'd be keeping my website and making jewelry out West - as in, if I weren't going to keep producing my designs then she certainly could, presenting them as her own. For a split second, my competitiveness and anger surged and I wanted to take back all the beads and escort her out of my studio via a swift and sharp boot in the butt.

One day an artist friend and collector of mermaid themed items came to the studio to give me a farewell hug. He is about to move house, after living in the same apartment for 18 years, and faces similar decisions for what I suspect is an even greater quantity of stuff.

"You know," he said, "sometimes I wonder if I'd be better off if I came home and discovered that the house had burned down. Then I could start from scratch."

I nodded. Suddenly losing one's belongings might be a traumatic but ultimately liberating experience. And I realized that I still have the option of selling or dumping most of what I own, heading to Colorado with only what fits in the back of my car. I wouldn't be the first person to do such a thing. But choosing to quickly divest of most of the objects that reflect my life's trajectory feels a bit too radical; I think I need some tangible reminders of who and where I've been to help me create who I am going to be. For years, my collection of beads reflected my tastes, my travels, and my thought processes, and being surrounded by these objects was a source of comfort and reassurance. If I started to run out of a certain kind, I'd order more, just to have them around. Those beads filled some of the holes in my life.

But as the process incrementally deconstructing my studio continues, I am learning to relish it when people come in and relieve me of objects small and large. As things sell, space frees up in my body and mind. I feel lighter. And I know that once I get to where I am going I will have forgotten about most of the things I chose to leave behind, who is using them and how.

And, piece by piece, bit by bit, I'll get to build the next part of my life.

Interiors, II

Tonight is my first official night in my new apartment. I spent an "unofficial" night here on Saturday, sleeping on the futon couch after a friend dropped me off quite late. This evening I will sleep on my bed, albeit unmade, as the mattress cover got rather filthy during its traumatic transition today. Miraculously, a mover and I managed to cajole, squeeze and tug my queen size mattress up two flights of very narrow stairs. Pushing this unwieldy item through the passageway of the staircase, trying to get it to contract enough to make it over just one more step, and then our relief that we actually succeeded in this ludicrous endeavor, brought to mind the birthing process (even though I haven't experienced it personally).

On a lighter note, I present a catalogue of items left in my apartment by the previous tenant, in the order in which I discovered them. Can you figure out which I kept and which I've tossed?

White fan
Ironing board
Iron
Orange vacuum cleaner
Cleaning supplies - many
Comforter, faded and worn
Three frozen chicken entrees (2 Barber Foods, 1 Stouffers)
An extra plastic shower curtain
One stick of salted butter
One bottle of Heinz Ketchup
Clear rectangular glass vase
Starbucks Mug, "Barista" series
Four sheer purple drapes
One sheer white drape
Wooden rolling pin
Red teakettle
Two chenille throw pillows
Toaster oven - working and reasonably clean
Bags of round silver balls from the Christmas Tree Shop
Scented candles
Faux crystal candle holders
1.5 liter bottle of Advanced Listerine, 80% full
Equaline value pack Douche, package of four, three remaining