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moving is hard to do

so... i have secured a room in a house in amherst, ma. it was the most fantastic bit of synchronicity (the landlord is from masan, korea, a city 1 hour from tongyeong. he had a girlfriend who lived in tongyeong and has actually been there before. the other roommates are super chill and one wants to go teach in busan, korea--the city i would likely teach in if i return to kr--after he graduates in december. the location is primo, near the pvta, near the post office, near the bike trail.... and it essentially fell into my lap via craigslist and many heartfelt pleas to the universe.). it is ideal and i should by all means be rearing to move in (it was ready on friday), yet somehow i am filled with anxiety over moving and avoidance about packing... so i ponder the why of it.

is it that the previous occupant of my room has left a bunch of personal detritus and i have to peel his posters and notes off of the wall and find a new home for his pan flute? partly. is it that i just moved back from korea a month ago, and the idea of packing again in such a small span of time (a chore which i am not at all gifted at and despise doing to begin with) is odious? yes. is it that the challenge of distilling billions of gallons of stuff down to the (highly subjective and mutable) essentials for my new life feels as alchemically impossible as turning water into wine? indeed! but surely the discomfort of remaining with my parents for even one hour longer should spur me on, overriding the above? this is quite true and leads me to dig deeper... and what i find is that i am terrified of moving into the new house because i made a pact with myself that once i am there i will get down to work on writing and illustrating a book. i fear moving there because i fear starting serious work on this project. and once i leave the negative and draining environment of my parents' house, i will forfeit the one excuse i've been clinging to for why i haven't once picked up a paintbrush, haven't once attempted to dust off my typewriter.... i've been uninspired and have been blaming it on circumstance and my deepest fear is that i will still be uninspired and creatively blocked once i move there, and then what will i do? my whole game-plan for the next 6 months is to make this book my focus, and if there is no book in me to manifest, well... i guess it will break my heart but i will either go back to korea to teach again, or will go to umass to get certified to teach american kids....

having typed this makes me feel a bit better. i'm sitting here listening to josh ritter on my ipod, surrounded by a staggering debris flow of junk from my partially-exploded-but-not-at-all-unpacked suitcase and duffle bag (books, clothes, vitamin bottles, a bag of almonds, a skein of yarn, tons of bits of ephemera...) and junk that has migrated from the crypt-of-nostalgia that is my old bedroom's closet (diaries, old love letters, photos...) and newly acquired junk. there is no order. i am overwhelmed by the volume of sentimentally-charged-and-thus-non-chuckable junk i have amassed over the years. the basement here is full of the physical trappings of my life in new haven which i stowed in a hurry before going to korea. i go into the basement and feel utterly detached from these things and yet unable to throw them away. my closet full of college and high school era stuff has at least been whittled down over the years. and now i have these huge boxes arriving from korea (so far one has arrived) with more of my past. the literal baggage has me craving to just go stay in a hotel where there is an absolute vacuum of personal associations, a liberation from me-junk.

there was this wonderful heady feeling of freedom the night of my 31st birthday when i stayed alone in a hotel near the tokyo airport. the 18-hour layover between my flights home had given me the chance to dwell in a completely neutral territory--between the life i was leaving and the life i was returning to. i had already packed up and mailed home my entire life-in-korea, cried my hour-of-cathartic tears silently on the bus out of tongyeong, and as the plane left the runway in busan (and my body's roots in korean soil were torn up) i felt my heart try to stretch itself out to contain both the rapidly-retreating-past (korea) and the inevitable future (non-korea) and utlimately, like an elastic band pulled too far, it snapped. i knew i might never return to korea and that this short but profoundly important period in my life was now offically over... it felt a lot like i was both experiencing my own death (quite protracted) and mourning for my life at the same time. when i arrived at my hotel room i was in emotional shock and its minimalist spartan personality-free confines, so devoid of korean-ness, said to me "it's ok. you are nowhere now," and i didn't want to leave. i luxuriated in a long nap, wore the provided kimono and watched the distant lights of the airport beam orderly illumination into the night sky, relishing the absence of momentum.

i am a huge fan of these rare moments in life (often realized in motels, hotels, campgrounds) when you are somehow magically extricated from your own life's drama, from all responsibilities (so long as you can pay the bill no one expects anything of you), and it feels as though you could just never go back to any of the trappings of 'you-ness' that limit your horizons. in this space you only seem to exist in the 'now'--it's an externally-induced zen-ness. right now i crave that so badly.

before = after