Moving?
May 22nd, 2007April 9, 2007
I’m sitting on the floor of my apartment, boxes, pens, old photographs, and other various bits of life detritus strewn about me. My cat sits, purring, next to me, looking for direction. She has the most intense stare and I often wonder what she’s thinking about. To her, a bomb has gone off in her life–favorite hiding places demolished, fur-covered pillows removed. We are moving to Toronto and she will become a Canadian cat. I wonder if her “meow” will change.
Moving is an exceptional experience, for many reasons; first, there’s no getting around the “moving” of moving. Everything must move. Physical things on the actual material plane. And there are no shortcuts. It makes me see, that in my normal daily life, if I tweak my attitude, or change a thought, my whole day can change; be nice to someone at the DMV, and the service I receive is quite different from that I receive if I shout and bang plate glass. Likewise, if I just alter a decision, like “maybe I’ll go to that dinner thing tonight”, all sorts of material-world things shift in accordance with the decision. But with moving, I can’t charm my way out of packing a box. No decision in my head will have that tchotchke leap into the bubble wrap. I must actually DO it. Every single ounce of moving is moving. One thing at a time. Very yang. It reveals to me the charm or bullshit margin that exists in life.
Funny how there are some careers that rely upon big shifts in the vibrational world–like the world of finance. I have always found in confounding that there are people who earn a slice of whatever money pie they are transferring. Like Paypal. It doesn’t even exist in the physical world, and yet, every time someone makes a transaction through its system, Paypal takes its slice. And although that slice (in terms of percentage) remains consistent, the more expensive the pie, the bigger Paypal’s slice. One transaction, without anybody, technically, lifting a finger. A very yin way of earning, and representative of an entirely different mentality vis a vis the world.
My book is the same. I delivered it to the publisher on December 15th, 2003 and after 6 months of editing, my work was over. And yet it not only continues to sell, it continues to do its work–in many different locations simultaneously–as crazy black scratches on a page, without my even remembering what I wrote. The yin world of ideas and multiplicity and space BLOW MY MIND.
And then there’s moving; a couch is a couch is a couch and it weighs 200 pounds. And somebody’s gotta freakin’ lift it! No airy-fairy yin approach to that.
Moving has also brought humility; I thought I would be ready by a certain date, but was about, oh, 10 days off my projection. I had to wrestle with my ego–the demanding, arrogant tyrant–and surrender to reality. I also had the brilliant idea of renting a trailer so I could drag all my belongings, plus my car, and my cats, all in one go. I thought I’d save time and money that way. But the day before the big move, when the fifth (male) friend mentioned that maybe I should check how much my car could safely tow for 600 miles before damaging the transmission, I finally surrendered again. With the trailer sitting, half-packed, in my driveway, I sat in my car, on the phone with a friend in New York. With him there to pick up my psychic pieces, I thumbed through the owner’s manual (so that’s what those are for!) and discovered that my car could safely tow a trailer weighing no more than 1,000 lbs., including its contents. Thanks to the magic of Google (talk about multiple, vibrational and not existing in the material world!!), my buddy in New York discovered that my very real trailer–empty–weighs 900 lbs. Well, if I wanted to transport a box of dishes and a lamp, I was good to go!
This gets back to the material (yang) world. The car can take one thousand pounds. Beyond that, the transmission gets taxed, and the brakes are strained. Period. With a trailer filled to capacity (as it would have been) I’d be pulling at least double the recommended limit, over 600 miles. Even with the sweetest smile, the greatest joke, or even a desperate flash of my breast, my Honda Civic can’t get around those odds. MOVING IS ABOUT MOVING and it’s subject to laws of the universe. Not personality. ARRRRRRRRRRRGHH!!!!!!!
So I’ve rented a truck ($$$), am having a friend drive my car, and I’m a few more days off my schedule. It’s all gonna get done, without bloodshed, and Brett’s gonna see Toronto for the first time. Maybe that’s what this whole thing is about. Who knows? I surrender.
Finally, I have lost about a ton of weight this week–literally. With trips to the dump and half-assed recycling (AL GORE WOULD KILL ME) I have dropped more stuff than I ever considered imaginable. Am I the only one who holds onto magazines, hoping I will find the time to read that article? And still, I have stored boxes of things I can’t let go of; I am a sucker for mementos–knowing, that when I’m eighty, I will really love going through those boxes, looking at photos and reading letters that trigger the old and crusty neural pathways in my brain which will hold–so tenderly–this life.
