movin' out movin' in, moving on? meh, maybe.

It's counterintuitive that there i so much build up to moving away. what if's and planning and replanning, goodbyes and loose ends, slipping out the back door, or parading out the front in some cases. A tight grip that is slowly removed, digit by digit until you can finally release. Like tweety bird in that episode where the cat is hanging on the flagpole eh? From the moment you forsee the move untl you take one last, hard, surreal look at your empty apartment and drive down your rue for the last time towards the interstate, the interlife really. Past the dancing bear, common grounds, the ghetto heb, 8th street, your old apartment, my old apartment, our first kiss, our first date, your last cigarette, kind of.
Letting every memory you have built there fall away until it is no longer real anymore because it becomes less and less relavent with time... up through the top of your head then out the ears and either side of the unrolled jeep windows, flailing through the 1oo degree air streaming behind your plate like a parade, in your honor, the "look what i did in the last four years" parade. meh. I did alot, a did little in other ways. Im settled and unsettled. I met some of my best friends at the last minute, which is better than never for sure. I wasted alot of time being sick, and lazy. But i made up for it. I found what i loved. Ive found strength in myself that i always had but never beleived in. I say what i want.
But its funny, everytime i leave a place whether voluntary or not, somehow it always seems like its time. Life has its ways of working things out liek taht, on its own, like a scab healing, or splinter that is left alone.
curious, as deeply rooted as one can become in a place, its always strange that no matter how hard it is to let go of a place, how easily it lets go of you, and how quickly. Its as if a good friend is unphased by your sudden and prolonged absence. it makes you feel very unimportant with a sudden need for validation. And you quickly realize how much your life in that place was not about the place at all. Even though that is how you label it, how you quantify it, how you even identify yourself. New yorkers, Southerners, Texans, Bontonians..err bostonites?..you are not your place, you place is you. Even though my bank notes are here at 12 and a half and my friends know my door and i napped on the sidewalk and there's paint from my project in teh door jamb, and the ghosting of your hand on the plaster. The walls are filled with my voice and my laughter, my tears, they've seen me naked, heard me do things id not readily admit to most people, and know me ill and well. Even though my skin cells line the base boards and my toothpaste splatter coats the sink, and my pheremones permeate the drapery and hand towels: this place, these things, area skeleton, a shell of my existence, and not solely proof of it.
A home is what it is because i am in it, and the people i love and have loved are too. I am a flighty hermit crab, willing to settle where i need to, but not willing to settle.
j