Week 98: The Joys of Moving

We are at the tail end of a lengthy move. A move that took us from an apartment to having all our stuff in a storage unit and staying at a friends’ house for two weeks, to a house that still needed a lot of major work. And now finally, the new place is starting to feel like home.

Most of the heavy inside work (plumbing, electrical, painting, floors) is done, and we are mostly unpacked and thinking about the aesthetics of the place, wall décor, lighting, etc. And we’re starting to deal with the garage and the forest that surrounds us.

Here’s our driveway, and the view out the front door.

Like most people I hate moving, I hate the part where you have to pack everything and carry it somewhere else. However, I love arranging the stuff once we are in the new place. I’m an organizing maniac. Writing is about organizing words, music is about organizing sounds, moving is about organizing stuff. It sounds very pedestrian, but there is an aesthetic side to any arrangement. And with the proper organization, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Books on a shelf, for example. It would be too easy to just organize them alphabetically by author or by title, that would be like music where all the notes are in order, do re mi fa so la si bored. Of course I could just throw them on the shelf in any random arrangement. But then I wouldn't have the time to recall the books I've read and ponder how they belong together, after all, you are what you read, right? Books on a shelf, records on a cabinet, stuff in the closet, pictures on the wall, it’s the story of our life, and it can be told a thousand different ways depending on how you arrange the parts. And each different retelling can reveal aspects of the story that might have been previously hidden or forgotten.

Here’s some shelves in progress.

















And here’s a working plan for the entry wall art.

Each picture is to scale of one of some of the many small pieces of art we have collected over the years, one of Claire’s icons is up there, one of Wednesday’s better half’s photo pieces too. Of course it would help if you knew what the pictures looked like, but I'll try to put a photo of the actual wall once the art is up.

So this house has been taking a lot of our time, but this Saturday we are going to the beach for a week, and when we come back the house will finally be our home, because a house is not a home until you come back from being gone.

And it’s nice to have things in order. Like they say “que buen sentido el tener la casa limpia” (makes good sense to have a clean house).

Here’s some more pictures of the house in progress.

The deck






















The fireplace





























The view towards the back













The view out the bedroom window













The front door

















The garage (practice space? another apartment? recording studio? office? late night disco?) in progress













Baby Anaconda's first picture of the house

















Our neighbors