We are doing our own version of moveon.org getting ready for the mover to arrive tomorrow to load us up and take us on our next adventure. A quick count leads me to believe we have filled one hundred boxes with treasured momentos and assorted possessions. (This doesn't not count the truck load of stuff from our mini storage and part of our house furniture which the movers picked up earlier this year). As I tend to continually raise the question, “Why do we need this crap, anyway?” I have been instructed to “Go blog myself” which accounts for the renewed flurry of activity on this site. Last evening I was accused of not appreciating living in an artistic environment. I countered with “if by living in an artistic environment you mean cramming articles of little or no interest to me on every flat surface, then, no, I don’t really appreciate it that much.” Such are the tensions of moving, something, with God’s grace, we might never have to do again. Sometimes it seems a lot; sometimes not so much. For, as anyone knows, small glass or porcelain articles wrapped in paper or bubble wrap take up lots of room in a box. I have been to Bi-Mart and Home Depot at least ten times for packing material and have scrounged dumpsters for larger boxes and even huge pieces of cardboard. Driving through the alleyways of Medford the other day I thought I spotted a mattress box which we could use to pack some big paintings. I wandered through a gate and noticed an employee on a ladder just inside a warehouse door. He was bleeding from a wound on the back of his hand. He wondered if he could help me. I asked if I could have the box. He emerged from the warehouse and I saw he was also bleeding from a wound on his leg. Blood was dripping off this guy. “The mattress business must be pretty tough,” I offered as a way of conversational gambit. No conversation ensued. The box wasn’t a mattress box and though he offered it I declined. He then escorted me out of the dumpster area, closed and locked the gate which ended my day of dumpster diving.
When the mover arrives they will load two futons, three antique cupboards, several smaller antique chests and cases, an antique table, an antique hanging lamp, several oriental rugs (cleaned and rolled), an antique dining room table, fifty or so pieces of art work, a picnic table, ten or so outdoor chairs, ten or so indoor chairs and the one hundred boxes; oh, and the piano which has been stored at someone else’s house for the last fifteen years. It doesn’t actually look that bad on paper. The big problem will be packing the most fragile things being held out for the car and I fear there will not be room for: a new computer still in the box, overnight luggage, a vacuum cleaner, two nearly life sized Skookum dolls (so eerily realistic they scare our adult children to this very day), a large clay rabbit, an antique rocking horse nearly as big as a pony, and a three foot long model of a Chinese junk. Today I will rehearse packing the car to prove or disprove my admonition that “There is no way I can get all that shit in the back of the car.” Some may wonder about the the Chinese junk. What is it’s significance, etc? I wonder the same things. I can only offer, by way of explanation, a poem I wrote many years ago (about our previous residence) trying to explain it to myself:
SECRETS OF THE CENTURY
Strangers enter the room and stop
Stunned with surprise.
A cat sits in the sunlight on a
Gold oak floor.
Friends make a round searching
Like shoppers, asking
What has she done now?
The gray horse rides the wicker sideboard
Wreathed in lace
And on the horsehair couch
Piled carelessly
Indian blankets patterned
Beige, orange, red, maroon to black.
Open the glass door on
The tea service,
Inside comes outside
The odor of ancient books
Like “Know Thyself” wherein
Is contained the secrets
Of the last century including:
How to pick a wife and
The consummation of marriage.
Meanwhile the room itself
Reveals secrets of that
And this century too.
Grandmother in her hat
Sits neatly on a chair and
From the mantle regards
The room with that look
Of melancholia we can’t forget.
She sees forever many things
Including Aunt Lou’s painting of
The Garden Door, and hats, and
Quilts, an antelope, a goat,
A Chinese hat with dragon on it.
Another horse, a dog, a doll,
Another doll, a sheep, a toy,
An elephant, two drums and
Yes! another doll, a ship,
A tiny bed and more and more
Until one’s patience just runs out
To know each story
If there is one.
The visitor stands and stares
At a lighthouse on a piano
And wonders who bought
All this stuff while from
The dual Klipsch cries Tchaikovsky’s
Romeo and Juliet.
The proprietor of the
“Museum” thus described
Stands beaming at their consternation
And picks a purple rock up from
The mantle and holds it out
Like it has all the answers
And says,
“Look at this!
It came from India.”
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