Moving, Impermanence, Home, Writing and Sense of Self

I would say I’ve probably moved more than the average person, and I’m getting ready to move again. I was born in New Haven, Connecticut, then my parents moved the family to LA. From LA we moved to Knoxville, and from Knoxville to Cincinnati. They stayed in Cincinnati. I got married and left for Richmond, VA, until I started working in Northern VA, commuted to a job in NYC, then took a job in Seattle, WA. I spent a couple of years, recently, in Carlsbad and Napa, California, before I moved back to the Northwest. I’ve moved fifteen times in seventeen years; this will make it sixteen moves in eighteen years. For some people, that is their idea of hell. For me, it’s more or less “normal.” Our marriage is 21 years old, and in that time, we’ve never lived anywhere longer than three years, the amount we’ve spent in our current condo.

What does it mean to pick yourself up and separate yourself from “home?” Does it change how you write? I would say, yes. When you move a lot, you’re more careful about picking up things – heavy furniture, friends, commitments. You write flash fiction and prose poems with your life, not novels and epic poems. Today I’m starting to pack up this house, and we are looking even more aggressively for our next house – one with no stairs, and a little space for a writing office for me, since I’m often working from home. Maybe a garden. Modest needs. We’ve been outbid on a couple of houses, already, turned down a couple after bad pre-inspections that found large problems, and in this crazy-hot Seattle-area market, if you like something, you have to bid on it right away, waive inspections, and offer more than asking. Then, you still only get it if you’re lucky, or there’s something wrong with it.

I was thinking about how this stuff affects my sense of self, my writing. I probably don’t write as well when I’m unsettled – say, that time between deciding to leave one place and settling into another. I also stop purchasing things, because they become just one more thing to pack. I clean out closets, peek in long-unopened boxes, give books and lit mags to friends. On the other hand, I tend to send out work more. It’s a good time to cleanse oneself of ghosts, bad feelings, illnesses, and extra stuff.  It gives you a sense of impermanence, of mortality, but also of freedom and possibility. Your sense of self can absolutely never be tied to a piece of land, to a house, to a piece of furniture, because you know in your gut that those things are all transitory. They are not you. I’ve lost boxes of important memories in moves, left behind friends that didn’t stay close. Things have been damaged and misplaced. And you are left, perhaps, wistful for a place to call home; in fact, when people ask, you’re not really even sure what to list as your “hometown.” I usually say Knoxville, because I lived there from 3-10 years old, and it seems like the place that fit me best. Now I consider the Seattle area my home for the foreseeable future, with its funky art scene, terrible traffic, overpriced real estate, mountains and rivers and oceans, herons and fleece-wearing folk. I don’t call myself a southerner, or a midwesterner, or a Northwesterner.  You adjust the fit to your needs. You say: I am leaving one place and going to another. How long will I stay? I never say things like “forever” as in “this is our forever house.” Because you never know. But I’m okay with that.