 |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
||
 |
 |
|
||
|
||||
 |
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
Moving BeginsFebruary 17, 2007 When I mention that one of my chairs is part of my filing system, most of my friends and acquaintances laugh, albeit a bit uneasily. Seems they all have a chair like that, if not a sofa or a table or a floor like that. (My chair is also part of my laundry system: it's a transit station for clothes that are too clean to throw in the laundry hamper but too dirty to put back in a drawer.) Well, I'm here to tell you that yesterday I spread the chair's to-be-filed stack out on my bed, and last night I either filed or tossed at least half of it. Some of the bank statements, phone bills, and editorial invoices bore dates from late 2004. What that means is that I've officially begun to pack. The unwritten rule is that unfiled stuff cannot be moved from one place to another. Either you file it or you toss it. I tossed a bunch of stuff from the financial file drawer: folders for publishers I no longer work for, old style sheets for publishers I do work for, copies of tax returns for 1991 and 1992 (overlooked in earlier purges of Extraneous Stuff) . . . Today I started dismantling a tall bookshelf. Not literally dismantling it: what I did was take all the stuff off it -- photos, stuffed animals, decorations of various kinds -- so I can get to the books and start packing them. That's tomorrow's project. Worry not: I'm not going to blog incessantly for the next two weeks about moving. I know from experience that moving leaves little to no time, energy, or sanity for writing of any kind, and Squatters' Speakeasy has first dibs on my writing time. Experience I've got. I did the calculations a few weeks ago: I've moved once for every two years I've lived on Martha's Vineyard. 22 years, 11 moves. Except it's not as bad as it sounds. I've been on Dunham Avenue for four and a half years. The year before that I moved twice, but for the glorious nine and a half years before that I didn't move at all. My first three years I moved eight times, which is pretty horrendous but back then I knew a woman who'd moved 18 times in 10 years, and with two school-age children, so it could have been worse, much worse. I rent on Martha's Vineyard; ergo I move. Moving frequently has its advantages. It curbs one's pack-rat tendencies. My last two moves, I fit all my belongings into six loads in a small short-bed pickup. I'll probably manage the same this time around. This time around I'm thinking of hiring a couple of people to help with the bulky stuff, instead of strong-arming a couple of friends. Either I'm getting more bougie or I'm getting less cheap. Renting on Martha's Vineyard also cures one of the notion that one has any control whatsoever over anything. My first winter rental ended on May 31. I started obsessing about moving on March 1 -- even though I had a sure place to crash for the summer. Miserable experience. The following year I started packing three days before I had to be out. Much better. Three miserable days beats three miserable months in any accounting method. From mid-1992 to September 2001 I lived in the same place. This bred complacency. I took on Commitments: Rhodry, Allie, full-time self-employment, writing my first novel. The place was sold, I had to move; I pretty much took the first plausible opportunity that came along, sure that it would be the only plausible opportunity that came along. Bad move. Really bad move. Situation was supposed to be year-round, but self-absorbed borderline-psycho landlady told me late the following April that I had to get out by summer. Find a year-round rental in May? With a dog and a full-time home-based job? and an income that under no circumstances could tolerate summer rents on Martha's Vineyard? I put out the word. I also consulted tenants'-rights organizations and the county housing office. Eviction proceedings, I learned, generally take three or four months, and district court judges rarely evict anyone with summer coming on. I became entirely ready to squat. (Borderline-psycho landlady accused me of trying to ruin her life.) I made a deal with the muses: You want me to stay on Martha's Vineyard, you find me a place to live. The muses came through. The first week of June I found a year-round rental that I could afford, that didn't mind dogs, and that was within walking distance of Vineyard Haven. I moved in July 1 and have been here ever since. Last October, when I learned that moving again was in my future, I made the same deal: Muses? You want me to keep writing about Martha's Vineyard, you find me a place to live. Long story short: they've come through again. I take my obligations very seriously. After I'd been through what we call "the Vineyard shuffle" -- moving twice a year -- I wrote a six-sonnet sequence called "Winter Rental." The first time I read it in public, a woman came up to thank me. She and her kids had been moving twice a year for years and she'd never known anyone to write about what it was like. I've been writing for her ever since.
|
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
 |
|
|||
 |
|
|||
Home - Writing - Editing - About Susanna - Bloggery - Articles - Poems - Contact Copyright ©
Susanna J. Sturgis. All rights reserved. |
||||