Come On In! (We're still unpacking)

Doorways! and textured glass windows.

Welcome!  We moved boxes and boxes of belongings four weeks ago into this Victorian in Oakland with so many windows and doors.  We unpacked enough to make dinner, sit with friends on the couch and send emails.  I still can't find the camera, actually.  But I wanted to invite you in, and show you around. Of course, A is about to leave on tour and I am heading to North Carolina to make paper so the housewarming will be postponed until August or September. Unless the house-sitters get ambitious without us.

repurposed hall light

let me cook you dinner on this old and lovely stove! the middle section is a griddle. yes, I have made french toast on it already.

some of the plants that survived

chandelier!

this is where the new (to-be-aquired) shelf will go.  this is most of my studio tools and supplies.

 

Studio of the Dramatic Lighting (disorganized)

Stories About Moving

After two weeks of packing, a long day with a moving truck and a few friends, three days off to unpack, we have now been at our new place for more than a week and you can finally walk from room to room without having to do any special contortions to get around something that is going to go somewhere else. We've even had a friend over for homemade pizza.  Not that there isn't more to arrange, discover, move around, share.  In a few days I will have a postcard to show you and maybe some photos of out lovely little place.  For now though I wanted to share five favorite moving moments I thought of while packing our place up and shifting it a few miles down the road.

1.  In 2001, leaving Savannah for Seattle, I was trying to clean up the last of our things at 2 am and I threw away $500 in cash.  The mistake was realized in the morning.  M's persistence led to a 30 minute search of all the garbage cans as the car was otherwise ready to go, stuffed to the roof with bikes, a table, and Andrea, who was catching a ride to Philadelphia via my mom's house.  M found the money, and, despite the anxious car, we walked down the street and got sandwiches before leaving.  I apologized but I also stubbornly held the belief that one who gets paid in cash shouldn't leave it in an unmarked envelope in a room full of unmarked envelopes.  Of course, one who throws away $500 shouldn't make excuses either.

2. 2012 leaving New Orleans for Oakland: Andy drove to one of the only grocery stores with ice for cold beer to offer friends as we packed a moving truck 2 days after a hurricane, while most of the city didn't have electricity.  He arrived back at his place to find me drinking elderberry vodka and water and packing and brought me ice cream despite the lack of refrigerator to store it.  Luckily, Eric showed up soon after and ate the rest of it before it melted. 

3.The one time I was ready on moving day, 1997, leaving Allston, MA, splitting my belongings between a youth hostel in the Back Bay of Boston, where I was an overnight front desk clerk.  I was lucky enough to have a room with only one roommate and we had separtate bedrooms and our oun "kitchen" : a hotplate and a toaster over.  But we were in the basement and surrounded by alcoholics.  Perhaps knowing this might not be a good move, half of my stuff was going into storage at my dad's place in New Hampshire to be retrieved 4 months later when the city and moreso the hostel living, depressed me too much so I loved to the New Hampshire seacoast.  Which was also depressing.  But when my friends arrived in the morning to help me move out of myAllston apartment, everything was boxed, labeled and I already had iced coffee.

4. New Year's Eve, 2010, Baton Rouge. The first of 4 days of moving as a freaskish cold snap hit the south and we didn't know how to turn ont the heat.  We figured out the stove, ate pasta, got dressed in shiny things, rode half across town to a party, got drunk, told Andy it wan't raining, rode home. It was raining.  Woke up cold, damp, hung over, on the floor of our new place (the bed frame was still at the old place). Still, it was a good place. Did I mention it was the time we moved to Lover;s Lane? Really.

5. July 4th 1996, Derry NH. A few weeks earliter, I moved out of my first apartment with a sleepover. Had requested teh elecetricity to be shut off that day but forgot that might mean 2 am so we could't watch the end of the zombie movie or vacum the industrial carpets.  I stayed with my dad for 3 weeks then was offered a bunk bed at a friend's apartment.   I drove a car full of my stuff, probably mostly summer clothes and books and my typewriter over to his place and moved in. His parents lived 30 miles away and let us stay there for free. The downstairs was haunted by a ghost or a demon and so we had to take out laundry to the laundromat in town. 

Ok, enough reminiscing for now.  It is late for me and I might have to get some sleep so I can fold and send 150 postcards tomorrow.

Road Warriors

We did the math, using google maps, estimations, factoring in for desperation, joblessness,and a potentially screaming cat. We didn't know our new roommate would also be waiting on us. Three days of 12 hours of driving, not including bathroom breaks, gas stops or the weirdness of driving a rented truck for hours and hours. This is what we saw:

for a few thousand miles. We drove a little at night which looked more like this:

but since we woke up around six in the morning and neither of us have ever been too fond of amphetamines, we didn't drive much past dinner. We stopped in Flagstaff to say hi to Adam. I ate peanut butter and jelly, we talked, and I woke at 4:30 because of the time zone changes. I driven through Arizona a few times and even stayed in Phoenix for a few months when I was 18, but Flagstaff at sunrise is pretty and vibrant with color. Unlike the California desert in the middle of the afternoon when you are just kind of ready to arrive.

We've both crossed the country a few times, separately, and this was supposed to be more leisurely, move adventurous. But after this summer of moving so much, I think we were both in a rush to sit still.

Excuses Cease to Cage Us

A note: I started this most nearly a month a ago, wrote half of it and put it down for the night. Then we heard there was a hurricane heading our way. The storm was not so bad but we lost power which meant no internet. And we were supposed to be renting a truck and moving to California. We still had no electricity as we packed the truck, drove three days across the Western US, arrived, moved into new house and now, just yesterday, did we get internet service back. Also, you may have noticed I have been moving around a lot. Finally though, I feel unjumbled enough to write a little about these photos.

Straight up optimism is hard to find in New Orleans. Optimism implies an acknowledgement of facts and New Orleans is heavily into denial. Troubles, what troubles? Here baby, have a drink. Though Hurricane Katrina hit 7 years ago, this sign still mentioned class registration until recently. Now, someone optimistically declares that we are better than this. Getting past our own troubles which look like excuses to others. Of course, a few days after I took this photo there was a warning for a hurricane heading our way, seven years later to the date and I, along with other friends, felt anxious for reasons that didn't line up with reality. What was I really scared of? I couldn't tell you exactly. And the knowledge that it wasn't going to be the same thing all over wasn't comforting enough. We made plans, gathered friends, called people we hadn't talked to in months. We reassured family, ourselves, each other, with reasonable sounding plans that didn't brush off the possibility of the worst. We packed a bag, brought food and water to a friend's house and waited. We made it through with friends, and board games, WWOZ playing the same 3 songs over and over, (one of them being "Let the Good Times Roll"). Our new roommate in California texted about our new house and we tried to explain that it would be a few days before we could get to the bank to send him a deposit. It is hard to convey how the city willingly shuts down, without electricity or during celebrations. Everybody loves a day off. We played boardgames wearing headlamps, sweated in our sleep and listened to wind peel siding off the house, possibly more because of its construction than the force of the storm. The storm passed and we came out, walked to the neighbor's, who was making pancakes and shrimp and grits. And we ate together like we should. New Orleans got some rain and wind, but southern parishes had it worse, and flooding closed the highway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

New Orleans is a lot of ups and downs, a lot of contradictions. It easily overwhelms the senses. Decay and excessiveness, dancing at funerals, hurricane parties. It might seem shallow, like we don't know what is going on. We do. Which is why at breakfast we listened to Scott talk about coastal erosion, hugged everyone upon arrival and leaving, and, after going home to pack more boxes, we came back to mid city to walk to the river with our friends' brass band. The next day, or maybe even the day after, friends helped us pack the truck, met us for one last drink and in the morning we left, our neighborhood still without electricity and cranky without air conditioning or ice, but still going.