Moving is Such Sweet Sorrow

Actually, moving is just sad. It's exciting to think of getting a new place, but very unsettling to me to have roommates leaving, a mostly empty apartment, all their stuff in boxes, all before I've even found a new place to live! Yikes. I tend to be really laid-back about apartment-hunting, trusting that something will come together at the last minute, it's not like I'll be homeless, maybe if I wait a bit longer I'll get lucky... etc. And often, I do. But for all this laissez-faire (or laziness?), I'm kind of a "nester." I feel so uneasy in my heart when my home is in upheaval. I'd like to think that I'm ok living out of a suitcase, but I think that's only the case if I know that my Stuff has a Home somewhere. And when I've lived out of a suitcase, I got very into routine and making a room full of someone else's stuff feel nice and like a mini-home. Anyway, here's our dining room, the bookshelves are all packed up and you might be able to catch a glimpse of the kitchen insanity behind it. This room has a lot of my stuff in it so it looks partly normal.

 Except, of course, for this wall of boxes.

The living room is going to be completely empty except for that little bookshelf as of tomorrow. OH MY GOD. I kind of like empty apartments, their white walls and seeing the floor all the way to the walls. It feels weirdly relaxing, free. But yeah, a little lonely.

As for my apartment search, my problem, I think, is that I'm TOO flexible. I feel like I could live anywhere, so it's hard to narrow it down. I'm basically like, oh it's cheap? Awesome. Let's take it. No closet? Basement? No problem. I saw this quote from Otto Dix, the German artist, on Eilis Boyle's blog, which I found today via Ill Seen, Ill Said:

"I'm not that obsessed with making representations of ugliness. Everything I've seen is beautiful."

It struck me, what a wonderful problem to have, everything I've seen IS beautiful. The ugly places have charm, the dark points in life have wonderful, resilient people that survive through them. I've wanted to write about this before, but I've really struggled recently with reconciling the beauty and happiness in life with the sadness and harshness that I see, not as much in my own life, but in others. We all have a lot of sadness, and sometimes it can seem like that is deeper or more real than the joy and beauty that is also flowing in and around and through us all the time. Theoretically, I believe they have the same strength but it's hard to be sure. Throughout this last year I've felt like I'm swimming in extremes: witnessing some of the worst parts of human experience but also some of the best. I guess I've always been willing to take suffering very seriously, but it's become important to take joy with the same "seriousness," afford it the same status in my view of the world.

So that's all rather abstract, but has to do with the same empty-apartment feelings: it's sad, but freeing, lonely, but exciting, and you have to just deal with those both at once.