We are the middle of shifting, intransient between the electronic cottage and the new townhouse. We slept in the latter last night surrounded by chaos of furniture, clothes, boxes and piles of this and that. We are stilll cleaning up and painting the old cottage before the tenant moves in tomorrow. The place is filled with junk. It is overwhelming.
Our time has gone for shifting. We have to be out tonight.
The dogs hated the new townhouse in Sturt Street----they cannot handle the steep, highly polished Italian stairs. Their paws keep slipping. They have to be carried up and down evening and morning. We couldn't sleep at all---just too much urban noise. I thought it would be romantic---my memory of living in Fitzroy in Melbourne was that it was music. Who needed a stereo when the music was all around you. Well, it was not romantic last night.
Its all chaos that undermines your identity. But we took a moment out last night to have a light meal in a lovely Greek restaurant just down the road in Sturt Street. We sat outside in the warm night air and gathered ourselves. It was a way of ordering the chaos and creating some meaning to the turbulence that we were living.
I realized that everyday life is a patterning of chaos through habitual routines. The dogs deal with the chaos by sitting in the car---the car has become their secure place. They refuse to get out of it when we go from place to place. Without the ordering we would we live in anxiety and fear.
I can see that when people collect junk it is their way of dealing with the chaos of life. Collecting junk and leaving it lying around the place is their way of creating meaning or making sense of chaos.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at April 23, 2003 10:35 AM | TrackBackI just can't understand why you are doing this. Why move to something you all dislike?
Posted by: Scott Wickstein on April 23, 2003 02:34 PMIts about change. To loosen up habits, shake oneself out of being stuck in ruts, moving onto a new and different way of living etc etc. The highly urban way of living is something to explore and experiment with.
Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson on April 23, 2003 05:21 PMA friend of mine once made the transition from rural (forest) fringe Melb to inner city Sydney. The transition period for both he and dog was gloomy chaos - but once new 'songlines' were found they all embraced the change. I'm thinking of moving too - but all my junk may scare me into stasis!.
Posted by: boynton on April 23, 2003 05:26 PMI'm kind of tired of moving, having moved six times in seven years. The last couple of times, we have had two weeks to find a place and move in.
Posted by: dj on April 24, 2003 12:24 PMMost of the junk does not fit the new place---its too clean and modern. So its gotta go including the boxes of papers I've been accummulating.
Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson on April 24, 2003 11:27 PM