the details of moving are the details of finding the necessary: grocery, hardware, coffeehouse, auto repair shop, library, people to talk to amicably, etc. the difficulty of moving is something else. I think it has to do with discovering yourself in a place, discovering your mood and routine and figuring out how to be you but in a whole new context. last week I had the sudden impulse to put in my ella fizgerald cd and make dinner and sing loudly and gutty to "how long has this been going on" and "please be kind," and man oh man was it just the right thing to do, and such a me thing to do that I couldn't believe that I hadn't done it earlier. there was a time where this kind of dinnertime solo performance was at least a weekly occurance, if not thrice weekly.

that's been the hardest thing in some ways. and probably it shouldn't be that hard to remember that you to sing along to old jazz standards or dramatically mouth the words to verdi's operas or find a script and imagine yourself playing one of the characters and read the entire script only saying "your part" outloud. why should that be hard, especially when you've been doing it your whole life?

I don't know. maybe it has nothing to do with moving at all, but just with not finding time to indulge in yourself (which is not to say eat lots of you-shaped cakes, though you could do that too). but I think that there's something truly jarring about relocation, so jarring that it kind of jerks us out of ourselves for a time, forcing us to wander around until we find our way home.

(note: I went to visit sunshine and he's still very much sunshine but then, he tends to be very much himself and that's the thing above all things I find most good about him. as for the city, it's a good city, a city I should be more in. it's got very good pizza and walls under walls and if you drive a short ways out it's got cows. and if you're me it's got sunshine too which means all sorts of things that are good for the (body &) soul.)