Moving is an interesting experience.
In all the things we do, it’s fairly unique. The feeling it instills in us – or myself, at least – is also fairly different in that it’s a bit of a blending of emotions.
Moving is somehow depressing, joyful and nostalgic all at once. Maybe catharsis could be the closest single emotion it builds up in you and then lets out.
It’s like we take a big stick and stir up all those memories which have lain dormant on our shelves, in boxes, at the back of drawers all this time. Most of them we had forgotten about, others recollected but only from time to time. Then, suddenly, when we find ourselves moving they all come briefly back to life.
Some of them are that hoarder in all of us, finally being confronted, dragged out from under the bed and tossed into the light. Do I really need three pairs of old jeans I can safely work outdoors in? Why are there so many opened boxes of pens lying around? Did I really buy a Lily Allen album for $3? There are more shoes than I know what to do with.
Jars of tea, with the price tag still on them. The tea gone stale and more faded than the labels. I haven’t drank more than a few cups in five years. Coffee converted me long ago.
Books I read many summers ago bring back memories of front porches and sunny days. The smell of cut grass and a cool breeze signaling an early autumn creeping in. The feeling of the pages beneath my fingers as I turn them and fight the wind to keep my place.
That cookie jar that currently holds my spare change, silver pieces worth no more than 25 cents, though usually less, take up the space where once cookies sat cluttered, given to me one holiday season some thousand years ago. I don’t remember if I enjoyed the cookies, but I remember the name of the baker.
Notebooks, notebooks and notebooks – those are the most common. I seem to own more notebooks that I do undershirts. Most of them half-filled with my sprawling chicken scratch.
Rules for board games, memos and lists, words that once lined up in a phrase sounded next-to-words.
There were notes from school, notes from courses I took on my own, sheet music I had written for guitar, story ideas, plot points, red pen notations that I took while over the phone with some client or another.
So many words, so much written that I hardly recall the half of it, even when reading it. Most of it could have been written in another life for all I know, by some other person with a similar shorthand, at some other place in their studies or career.
Sometimes I know the man behind the words, other times it’s simply a mystery.