Moving house
Sep. 22nd, 2019 10:19 pmToday I moved. It was a chaos of not quite enough time or boxes, made feasible by the much-appreciated help of leaflemming and ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seahearth. Now I am sitting on a bed just remade, room disarranged and only mine, with two partial and two complete strangers as housemates; also a cat, two axolotls in the living room, the prospect of foster kittens, and faded Studio Ghibli posters in the stairwell. My Saint Jerome is still at the old flat, although he has been moved from his position of authority in the living room on the old blocked-up hearth, out of the centre of his accumulated shrine of miscellany, and now he leans facing the wall, giving it the same stare of mild disappointed grimness he gives everyone. (I suggested he might stay behind, too much part of the flat to shift; my flatmate-until-this-morning Lucy made it diplomatically clear that this was not precisely her view of the situation, and that though she had never disliked Jerome enough to ask for his removal, she was damn well not going to be saddled with him in perpetuity. In his place, then, a sealed hearth with four loose bricks in it and one small brass Buddha, which I once won from my grandfather in a game of cards, and which now replaces the sinister garden gnome who had been hiding behind Jerome for the last two years).
I just heard a door swing to downstairs, and the wind was rattling the sash window until I put a sock in it. On the strongest gust the whole room shook a little. The small bookshelves fit along the far wall so long as I don't mind never closing my door or else never opening it, which will need a better solution, sometime after my clothes are unpacked and the crockery is out of the laundry basket. Currently the door is closed, because the cat is energetic and mischievous. Though he can also open some of the doors, so we'll see if it holds him. The established life of this house has so many pieces; I may slot right in among them, or any one of them might become the thing I come to find intolerable and unalterable in one or three or six months' time. (Mostly I fear for sleep; most things exact lower prices on me than sleeplessness -- although not perhaps the flu, so if my new flatmates' flu refrains from coming to live in me I will be very grateful, just as I will be grateful if the combination of wall thickness and earplugs turns out to be thick enough to make our different sleep schedules unproblematic).
I've never felt quite this kind of pleasure in the fact that the Steven King novel beside my bed is exactly the same one as it was two days ago and I can go right back into a story which has not changed. You'd think I would have felt that when I left home -- but then, when I left home I was so busy I didn't finish reading any fiction for the first six months.
... ...
Today I learned that my grandmother's house at Ruapuke has burned down. She is unhurt, having got out in time. I've tried to write about this, but what I've written sits artificially, and it's too late at night for me to pare it into what I really want to say. It was a good house; I've never known a house that better expressed a single life or a single strong aesthetic. The only word I've ever needed to come up with to describe how the house felt, or the prisms and driftwood and the choice of objects on the shelves, is 'Annish'. Ann is still Ann, so there will be another house, but not that one.
seahearth. Now I am sitting on a bed just remade, room disarranged and only mine, with two partial and two complete strangers as housemates; also a cat, two axolotls in the living room, the prospect of foster kittens, and faded Studio Ghibli posters in the stairwell. My Saint Jerome is still at the old flat, although he has been moved from his position of authority in the living room on the old blocked-up hearth, out of the centre of his accumulated shrine of miscellany, and now he leans facing the wall, giving it the same stare of mild disappointed grimness he gives everyone. (I suggested he might stay behind, too much part of the flat to shift; my flatmate-until-this-morning Lucy made it diplomatically clear that this was not precisely her view of the situation, and that though she had never disliked Jerome enough to ask for his removal, she was damn well not going to be saddled with him in perpetuity. In his place, then, a sealed hearth with four loose bricks in it and one small brass Buddha, which I once won from my grandfather in a game of cards, and which now replaces the sinister garden gnome who had been hiding behind Jerome for the last two years). I just heard a door swing to downstairs, and the wind was rattling the sash window until I put a sock in it. On the strongest gust the whole room shook a little. The small bookshelves fit along the far wall so long as I don't mind never closing my door or else never opening it, which will need a better solution, sometime after my clothes are unpacked and the crockery is out of the laundry basket. Currently the door is closed, because the cat is energetic and mischievous. Though he can also open some of the doors, so we'll see if it holds him. The established life of this house has so many pieces; I may slot right in among them, or any one of them might become the thing I come to find intolerable and unalterable in one or three or six months' time. (Mostly I fear for sleep; most things exact lower prices on me than sleeplessness -- although not perhaps the flu, so if my new flatmates' flu refrains from coming to live in me I will be very grateful, just as I will be grateful if the combination of wall thickness and earplugs turns out to be thick enough to make our different sleep schedules unproblematic).
I've never felt quite this kind of pleasure in the fact that the Steven King novel beside my bed is exactly the same one as it was two days ago and I can go right back into a story which has not changed. You'd think I would have felt that when I left home -- but then, when I left home I was so busy I didn't finish reading any fiction for the first six months.
... ...
Today I learned that my grandmother's house at Ruapuke has burned down. She is unhurt, having got out in time. I've tried to write about this, but what I've written sits artificially, and it's too late at night for me to pare it into what I really want to say. It was a good house; I've never known a house that better expressed a single life or a single strong aesthetic. The only word I've ever needed to come up with to describe how the house felt, or the prisms and driftwood and the choice of objects on the shelves, is 'Annish'. Ann is still Ann, so there will be another house, but not that one.
