'Something Changed'

Well this afternoon Aunty B went up up and away on her way to grand old Europe, where she and Bizaro will be setting up home for the year to come, maybe longer, who knows. I mostly felt happy for her when I was waving her goodbye at the airport but coming back here to the pad where she had crashed the last few days noticed that there are little odds and sods of her stuff, like her toothbrush forgotton on the bathroom sink, I felt sad, because her things are lingering but she's gone for ages.

After watching her finish up all her Australian work, organise 'stuff', empty the flat, get rid of past tenants furniture, do the 'oh shit what do I need for now, and what do I need when I get off the plane and what do I need in 5 working days and what can I wait 3 months for and what do I not need at all?' packing and strategising I was reminded of the few times I have gone overseas, and particularly the time I packed up stuff and didn't have a job or house or life plan to come back to. It has it's particular aesthetic, packing up and moving away. All those little shitty household items which are so useful, and you have to buy to set up a house, but that just become logistical challenges when you have to get rid of them (if you are not fond of the 'chuck it in the bin and let landfill deal with it' approach, which most folk I know are not). An egg flip, a bucket, a half eaten packet of pasta, that skirt that you haven't worn for two seasons coz it rides up and bunches when your work bag rubs against it - where will all these things go? Who needs them most? What day will you take them there? What time? On what round trip to what other useful place on the list? What wil you store with significant others, what things hold such sentimental value that the hassle of moving them does not outweigh your care for them in the first place. Is this a phase of 'travelling light' or of 'setting up house'. Will you have to start all over again sometime soon - the collect and purge cycles? Moving house even a suburb away poses many of these same conundrums, but it is amplified when you're paying per kilo for things to go halfway around the world, and infused with a special kind of excitement and simultaneous sense of loss.

I moved from my home town 7 1/2 years ago now (as I type that a big part of my brain goes 'noooo, no way could it be that long ago!' - but it is) and I had similar feelings when I did that move, stagggered in two parts. The first one was more full of excitement than loss, it was a decision made on the head of a pin, a quick turnaround over Christmas New Year of 1999-2000 and the decision to take a job in another state, leave a partner temporarily and survive with just a boot full of clothes and bedding. It was a road trip, it was a working holiday feel, it was an adventure. Almost a year later when I went back to a house that didn't feel like mine anymore, to pack up half of it's contents through tears, it felt mostly like loss. Mermaidgrrrl and Bee Sharp were there that day giving me bolstering advice and encouraging me to be more firm in the reclamation of objects. I owe them for many of my household goods, as at that stage I was of the 'don't be petty, just take the bare minimum and enjoy the view from the high moral ground' school of breakups, they were less emotionallly involved and more pragmatic, of the 'don't be stupid, it was yours anyway and you'll just have to buy it all again if you don't' persuasion. Thanks gurls.

When I went to Malaysia for a swathe of a year for work I left my cat with BShap and Bizarro, boxes in the shed of S & F, random bits with my old housemate in Leichhardt, stuff scattered to the 4 winds. 5 maybe. I re-remembered just the other day that my bright red chaise lounge is still in hometown from when I first moved, having been cared for by Guitarboy (and Miss Ivy too) for all this time. Argh, sorry, I will organise trucking soon my friends!

When my mum also moved from our home town a few years ago, to a different state to the one I'm in, she gave away much of her household goods because she was heading over to join her interstate partner in his home which was already furnished and kitted out. I cried uncontrollably when I realised she'd given away all the furniture that I remembered from my childhood, without offering it to me, all the distinctive things that I remembered as part of 'home', even though home had passed through many houses over the years. I was also upset that she'd given away some of the things I'd left with her to look after after I'd moved interstate myself. She was baffled and couldn't understand why I was crying over, for example, an old kitchen cupboard, and I in turn had forgotten how hard and crap moving can be - her first interstate move, at age 40+ - and that she was also entitled to make a new start, and make those same hard decisions about what to take and what to leave.

Just a few weeks ago I visited S & F and while there poked around in my boxes in their shed, pulled a scarf out and took that home, not quite ready to be reacquainted with the whole mysterious content, and assured by them of their ample shed space for general higgeldy piggeldy storage. Maybe soon I'll reunite with those old cardboard friends and try to find room for their contents in my bedroom in this already full sharehouse.

I guess while people rent and intend to move around there is a natural waxing and waning of attachment to place. Maybe the days of finding homes for eggflips will temporarily pause while people around me 'settle down' into families and owning homes. 'I wonder if I will?' I muse internally, as if my own life is something mysterious which unfolds and I watch. Which is what it feels like at the moment.

Anyway, I didn't mean to reflect aimlessley at length on moving and lifeplans and boxes. Instead just wanted to say bye Miss B, happy trails, we'll miss you here in Synneytown!