we've arrived

the move from Chicago to Seattle went well, now it's time to live with my parents until we find our own home...

love and couches

I often find myself seeing the world as I will remember it and not as it currently is. Because I so often go back to memories for writing or even just to put together the pieces, I now find myself trying to see things before they happen. Preparing for the next article, book, life. I find myself viewing the world as if it is not me that is living it, but me that is directing it, painting it, acting it.  Take this moment. Josh is at work and I just cleaned the apartment. Five hours ago there were piles upon piles of my papers and books and clothes. My stuff everywhere. But now it is clean and I sit here in my green chair next to the window by the plants and purple curtains and I look at how big it looks when it’s clean. I think about how much space there is and how beautiful the hard wood floors look when there is nothing on them. I always wanted hard wood floors, and now they are here. In my suddenly clean apartment. But anyways, what made me think of this is the fact that I was looking at the pictures on the wall above the couch and they made me think of Jamie, my last roommate, and my old place in the loop in chicago. They are in the same order, over the couch, and I think about how I remember that apartment and I think about the memories that were there. I think about memories a lot. I think about the movement of objects a lot. This chair for instance. I think about all the places that it has been with me and all the places that it may have been in the past. Its like that movie The Red Violin. I don’t remember very much, but I have been thinking about that concept my whole life. I used to think about the fact that if I moved to a new room or location I would have to make sure that I changed it, so it looked different, and I think somehow, with the help of my parents I was able to do that until I was about nineteen. Then I ran out of money and the furniture in my home became the furniture in my home, no matter where that home was. This chair is my chair and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I have to keep it. It is my friend. And everything else around here, in this apartment, with a few exceptions, is a constant. The brown couch. I think about it sitting in the apartment in the loop. I think about it sitting in the house I bought it from. I think about its lives, and what happened on it. I think about who all slept on it. Who made love on it. Who cried, laughed, sang on it. I don’t know where this is going, but I wonder what I will think of when I remember this place. When I see the couch again, with the same pictures above it, will I think of this apartment, or will I think about my last apartment. I will really miss this place, and I am afraid that I will continue to miss its shape and form as I miss the one on Broadway in Seattle. Why do I make apartments into living beings? Doesn’t that seem a little strange? I miss them like old friends. I don’t want to leave. This place especially. I want to bring it with me. It didn’t do me any harm. I love it like the Broadway apartment, but I have better memories. At least I have josh to create new memories with. He will be there in the next home we create, and probably even the next.