Packing Feels

I wish my record player wasn't already packed.  I could really use some good old scratched Jimi Hendrix, Dave Brubeck, The Doors or even The Muppets.  Judas Priest just isn't cutting it as a soundtrack to the milky-sweet haze of the past that surfaces when I dig into my Old Stuff.

I'm going through my closet and dresser drawers today-- a whole history of clothes.  My wedding dress, the one I jubilantly wore almost two summers ago in a field in Vermont, is now packed.  The shirt I was wearing while in labor with my (not-so) wee one is hanging over my shoulder while I decide its fate.  There are two (so far) garbage bags full of clothes I've outworn, outgrown, or never quite grew into.  

It feels as though I'm saying goodbye to all the Sarahs who inhabited each and every item of clothing I've touched today-- even those that are coming with me.  They'll be worn by a different Sarah by the time they get where they're going.

Today

Sculpture by Ivan Mestrovic

I am savoring these last few weeks of commuting to-and-fro the city. Bursting from the train tunnel towards the last few minutes of daylight over the meadowlands is a treat I'll miss. 

It's starting to feel like we're moving-for-real. I mean, I've been surrounded by packed boxes for weeks, and furniture has been disappearing or removed to the "staging area" every few days by my lovely wife. But something shifted this week, and I no longer feel entirely in that in-between state of waiting for this move to happen. 

Nine more days of work left!  Seven years'-worth of accounts payable has been filed (more years were tossed), and I've started emptying my office of what we were all led to believe in the movies fits in a lone file box. Ha!

I find myself wondering, "What's next? What does it look like? How does it feel, smell, taste, sound?" as the train whooosh-rushes me home-for-now. 

Cannot wait. 

Hello!

I ran across some amazing photos by Holly Wilmeth today. This one, in particular, grabbed my attention:

“Albino Boa Constrictor”
Portland, Oregon. June 2013
“Snakes symbolize transformation; shedding of the old and embracing of the new.”

Aside from its absolute gorgeousness, and the fact that I have a large snake tattooed on my back (a catalyst for my previous life transformation), this picture grabbed me because I am once again shedding the old and embracing the new.  But also the old.

I'm returning to my New England roots.  

In just a few weeks, my wife, daughter and I will begin the process of moving from our New Jersey home to beautiful Western Massachusetts.  I never thought I would be in this place.  I was quite convinced that living near and working in NYC was somewhat permanent.  But little by little, I've fallen out of love: with the overpopulation, noise, smells, train delays, pollution, and pace of life. 

Each day as I walk from my office in Midtown Manhattan to the train that brings me home to Jersey, I can increasingly feel people around me pulsing with their sorrows, anxieties, manias.  The mannequins in big-name storefronts scream at me to keep up my appearance by spending all my money.  Buses, taxis, delivery trucks, oversized SUVs thunder past me as I weave my way through the crowd, intently focused on my Penn Station destination.  

No more!

I will miss the things that I'll miss.  Friends and co-workers and architecture and art and books and food and music.  The thrill of walking down a city street in the autumn or spring, lost in my own world of music.  The sublime process of being tattooed by one of the best.  Feeling understood by misfits.

Overwhelmingly, though, I feel calm and sure about forging a new path in a place with more nature and fewer people.  Being closer to my family.  Finding a new way through the old.

Goodbye, New Jersey!