Another year, another room
Where you hang a few things on the walls
It’s just where you call home for now,
Until it’s time to take them down and move on.
-David Gold, from “To long life in the Limbo Union” Woods 4: The Green Album
The act of moving, and by that I mean changing your home from one location to another, is usually not looked back upon fondly. This is for good reason, as moving can involve hours of physical labor, tedious organizing, and frantic cleaning in an attempt to recover one’s security deposit. Having moved some five times in the last three years or so, I can say that I am thoroughly through with the experience. I’m ready to have a home and I hope this time I get to stick around it in it for a good long while.
However nostalgia, as I’ve made a point to clarify in the past, is not always a memory of something positive, it is just a powerful memory. The moving experience is always memorable for me. You take your things off the walls. You pack your knick knacks into boxes. Soon the clothes and the pots and the pans go, then your furniture and your toothbrush. You are left with empty rooms, no longer your home at all. For me it is a powerful experience. You enter limbo, where you get to contemplate all the places that were once home.
At the same time, there are numerous positive nostalgic feelings that I get when I move. I remember the past places I lived. I remember the joy I had there, and the promises that location made when I moved in. I also remember how I felt when I moved out. Here are a few of those places. I get take back there a lot.
Frank Court, Bakersfield, California
My parents rented a house in Bakersfield when I was young while my mother stayed home with myself and my sister. When I was five, they bought a house, and so the first real memory I have of a house being mine was on Frank Court. I remember the house being empty, and shouting to it, “goodbye!” as I walked out the door for the last time. I remember seeing the row of four bushy trees for the last time, as well as a thicket at the end of the street that I used to play in with my friends that lived down the street. I fell asleep at some point in the move and woke up in my new room.
North Park Apartments, Fresno California
My first apartment was across the street from Fresno State, where I was a graduate student at the time. They were really crappy, but I had a great time initially being independent. I moved in sort of one item at a time, and slowly the apartment became more like home. I’m nostalgic of lots of experiences from that little cave of a place, a few of which I address in my Berserk entry.
