The Catharsis of Moving

Poem of the day:
"Advice to Myself" by Louise Erdrich



Leave the dishes.

Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator

and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.

Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.

Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.

Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.

Don't even sew on a button.

Let the wind have its way, then the earth

that invades as dust and then the dead

foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.

Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.

Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles

or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry

who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.

Except one word to another. Or a thought.

Pursue the authentic-decide first

what is authentic,

then go after it with all your heart.

Your heart, that place

you don't even think of cleaning out.

That closet stuffed with savage mementos.

Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth

or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner

again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,

or weep over anything at all that breaks.

Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons 

in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life

and talk to the dead

who drift in though the screened windows, who collect

patiently on the tops of food jars and books.

Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything

except what destroys

the insulation between yourself and your experience

or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters

this ruse you call necessity.

(From “Original Fire: Selected and New Poems.” © Harper Collins Publishers, 2003.)

We are in the middle of a one-half move. Work is beginning very soon to replace the kitchen in our modest mid-50s California rancher.

It was a hard decision. Merrie and I both prefer older stuff, and the cabinets and tile counters had loads of character. Unfortunately, they had also endured 50 years of hard use and were about worn out.

We considered rehabbing but the costs were surprisingly high. We also wanted to remove a wall, not just in response to the real-estate mantra of “open feeling” but to provide a full view of the canyon in back of the house.

And so in a few days the kitchen will be gutted and a wall taken down. The work requires that we vacate the kitchen, dining room and our TV room which is adjacent to the kitchen. In essence we have to move out of half our house.

Right now we are packing boxes and rearranging furniture for the months-long journey into new kitchenhood. There are lots of boxes and dozens of decisions about where to put things and what to keep out. And what to throw out.

My pattern when packing and moving is to pack first and throw away at the other end. I know this wastes energy and makes little sense to most people.

But I guess I realized early on that the time to make difficult decisions about what stays and what goes (translated “priorities”) is not during the stress of packing. So usually I have the throw-away and give-away boxes nearby when I unpack at the other end.

I seem to have a clearer, more-relaxed sense of priorities at the end of moves than at the beginning--maybe because I’ve lived without the packed stuff for a while.

That’s the benefit of moving. It’s a discovery of what I can live without, and what I like to have around me.

When that discovery is done, the real catharsis begins. Get the Salvation Army on the phone!