Thou shalt move on with thy life

When they arrived I was still stuffing things into one last box. I taped it shut quick and gave it the most appropriate label, “Oh shit”, before pushing it into line with the others. And after four and a half hours my boxes were stacked again and my furniture lay upended every which way in this new space. Rather than the usual “rental flat white”, these walls explode with color. The kitchen counters are granite. Visions of fancy moulding and fine wood floors dance through my head. I attempt to foresee my possessions, exploded from their boxes, and wonder how well my taste will inhabit this space. And then the tiny bit of fear starts telling me that it’s too good for me. I’ll loose it and fuck it up. Fears from the outside world crowd in like bad weather hanging in the window.

I head back over to the old place. From the world where I can find nothing I go to the place where there is nothing, save for a few bits of paper on the floor, a discarded extension chord, some piles of dust, old rugs, a filthy dish rack, some debris of personal use, cleaning supplies and rooms with piles of mouse poop in the corners. I am so angry at this apartment. I’m angry at the way it wasn’t anything like the unit I was shown. I’m angry at how very dirty it was as I moved in and how very broken were the appliances. Back here by the Popeye’s and Dunkin Donuts drive throughs I was an accidental tenant in a place doomed for neglect. And I’m supposed to clean? I could take a shit in the middle of the living room and leave this place better than what I found. I determine to not lift a finger!

I wander around the rooms, trash bag in hand and sad in heart. I pick up the paper, then the extension chord, come to something the movers accidentally left in the closet (fuckers!), and then I enter the bathroom. Looking into the sink at the tidal rings left by poorly draining pipes, I see her. A middle aged woman with poor knees and armed only with a bucket and a mop will be dispatched to face this apartment. The people who ignored my pleas for help with the mice, the people I’m so angry with for stealing from me or sassing at me, those men will not come in here to face this. It will be just her, alone, coming in to wash the rooms of any leftover memories. I can see her already, tired and already beyond shock at the things folks leave behind. I grab my broom, some cleanser and start.

And so this is it, I lose time in the scrubbing, spraying and sweeping. This is a mitzvah to the many soups, mousses and tortes created in this kitchen and the art career resuscitated in that bedroom become work studio. A reminder that this was the next, best, biggest step when I first filled these rooms lives in every sweeping of dust and decision to not leave a piece of trash behind.

When it’s over, tired buttocks parked on the windowsill, I sit shiva. The last words out of my mouth when I left to follow the moving truck were “this place just could have been so much better”. I figured that I had come into this place with high hopes for a basis to live differently, maybe better. I saw myself as a person with visions dashed. But perhaps simply I expected a quicker fix than what I found. I thought my plans were being rudely thwarted by the rodents. But they were just trying to move me on and fixing takes more steps than just the first one. The decision to move to higher, better ground which swept me in here has also, really, been the gust that blew me out. I came in here to live on my own simply to make a beginning at my own creativity and independence again. And now the beginning is over. That’s all. And this next phase shall end, too, in its’ own time.

In the end I leave behind the roach spray and boric acid. I leave the bag of mouse poison and the glue traps. I leave a spray bottle of glass cleaner and a roll of paper towels. I leave the toilet scrubber and plunger. I leave half a roll of TP. Then, I leave some foreign coins at the spot from which my golden dollar collection was stolen and I leave the piles of mouse poop at the margins of every room, for every loving birth is accompanied by a little slap of reality.