resettlement

The knuckle on my first finger is purple; it only bends halfway. The side of my pinky is swollen. My wrist has finally started rotating again, reviving after a day of not wanting to move at all. My feet ache when I'm not on them. My back is so tight it hurt to bend over to shave in the shower. I have been packing and loading and unpacking and unloading for five days in a row; and though it took a serious act of will, today I did not stop until 99% of my stuff was out of its packaging.

I have too many belongings for this small space. I am a master of stacking and stuffing items into any possible space, but in this little apartment I will have to get creative to make it all fit. Being so surrounded by boxes, having to shift and re-shift everything I own to make pathways because there is not enough space to just clear one and leave it, finding that the terrible movers did indeed break a few things, it has been a stressful experience. But many hours into my day today, I started to feel a calm growing. Out of one box came the large yellow and orange old-timey Fiesta Ware serving plates I collect from antique dealers. Out of another came my velvet iguanas. Out of a small one came my movie collection, and then boxes and boxes of my photos. Out of many came my books: Neruda, Octavia Paz, Rilke, and so many other poets; Danticat, Allende, Marquez, Gordimer, Husseini, Ishiguro, and so many other novelists; Nelson Mandela, Congressman John Robert Lewis, Rigoberta Menchu, George Orwell, John McPhee, Thoreau, and many other beloved books of autobiography and nonfiction; my art books; my writing books; my Mesoamerica and archaeology books. Out of these boxes came books that I have carried with me for years, in some cases multiple decades. They add color to my room; they add stories; they add camaraderie.

Later in the week I will hang things. Eventually I will go to Ikea and find receptacles for the remaining items that currently lie tucked under tables or stacked neatly on my desk. Eventually I might even throw some things out. But in the meantime, after 36 tiring hours of existing apart from the real world, focusing entirely on my little bubble, I live in a new place, and it feels like home. It already does; I whittled away at the mess and swept away the debris, and out of it all came home—my home, the one I always craft anywhere I go. So I've done enough work on it for now; before I polish it off, I'll let it sit a day or two, and in the meantime, as I ruminate on how to rectify a few small concerns, I'll do what I really came here for: go exploring.