unpacking

Two weeks ago I became a home-owner.  The feeling was like emerging from the pool after a series of underwater acrobatics.  Slightly disorienting, but with a feeling you went in the right direction.  Of course I’m not completely on dry land; now I will also have to tread water in order to maintain my property (and my mortgage).  But I can still inhale deeply, tilt my head back, and relax in the knowledge that I own the space around me.  While the native American in me has an inherent disdain for the term "mine", as far as legal rights go, I have to admit it's pretty sweet.

We are almost unpacked.  Only a few odds and ends: a couple of things for storage, a disassembled lamp patiently waiting on the hearth, our paintings.  When I have no stuff, moving is a breeze.  Point in case: when I moved to Japan out of college, what little stuff I had was thrown into a suitcase, and the rest was sitting in storage in a house owned by my best friend's sister.  Well, actually… there was also a box or two in the basement of a different house - a cozy house in Cambridge I had lived in with four roommates.  There was also all of my possessions at my mom's house in Cincinnati ... but if I had been able to ignore that stuff for four years, I could easily ignore it for another one or two.

So, my friend’s sister, the house in Cambridge, my mom’s house, and my suitcase.  That was it, the sum total.  The night before moving to Japan (or maybe the morning of - I can't remember), I packed the suitcase, crammed other necessaries into a carry-on duffle bag, and boarded a flight for another country.  The song the “Molly McGuires” strikes me as appropriate for that particular set of circumstances… since I’ll never see the likes of that again.

The part that resonates with me still, as I grow older and reflect on the inevitable accumulation of stuff, is that besides deodorant and the infrequently used personal item or two, I did not lack for much in Japan.  This was surprising, since I had given the whole process about as much foresight as my decision to follow my high-school girlfriend to college in Boston, giving up a full ride at a state school, my friends, and my parent’s support (not to mention the hefty post-graduation sum my dad was offering me to stay in Ohio).  During the course of that adventure, similar to the move to Japan, the stuff part seemed to work itself out.

For my Boston migration, I had to take my stuff with me in a two-door car, in a single trip.  The move was supposed to be, and was in fact, for four-odd years.  Because it was against my parents' judgment, it was one of the only moves where I didn't have the good will of other to rely on for help.  Fortunately, I had two things going for me: I still had a car, and I had almost no stuff.

Of course, like most privileged first-world brats, no stuff meant that my two-door car was practically ready to pop. Indeed, had you tapped on the hood hard enough, a computer cable might have snaked out of the rear bumper (I'm sure it would have appeared as disquieting as it sounds).  Said college-era computer rested in the bucket of the passenger seat, above a nest of speaker wires, documents, and toiletries.  Upon arrival at my apartment in Boston, I found that the can of shaving cream tossed haphazardly into the mix had been completely emptied, and over the course of 12 hours the gel itself had either dried or frozen, since my computer, which was stuck to my backpack, which was stuck to my toiletries bag, was coated in a rock-hard layer of the stuff that didn’t come off until a thorough scrubbing.

In some past / future life, I must have either been a sailor or a Star Trek ensign.  In those times, storage space was pretty unnecessary. Besides a closet for those spandex-inspired uniforms (certainly in the Star Trek life, and possibly in the sailor life as well), and a pad-locked drawer for the taser (because every taser should be pad-locked), storage space was pretty unnecessary.  If you did happen to need something specific, that's what the replicator was for.

What you didn't see were huge suitcases where they kept all of their earth-stuff that they quite frankly didn't need.  Whatsmore, I am fairly certain in that past life, like this one, I was quite content.  Perhaps because of that (can I blame it on a past life?) when I have to move stuff, actual stuff, and there's no getting around it, I am just about the most inept, disorganized person you have ever met in your life.

At this point, when I look around me, there are certain things that I’m less flippant about than I was before.  For example, the composite countertops are treasured.  The two sinks, with their constant smirk of privilege, are appreciated.  The sofa, my comfortable chairs, the teal stool I splurged on for my wife at the antique store in Brooklyn for her birthday… these things I can’t just throw in a car.  In fact, the whole home, including the immense amount of energy that went into acquiring it, making it legally mine, and working to make it perfect, is something I couldn’t pass off to a friend or flippantly disregard (at least not yet… I still have a few years before the hobo urge strikes me and I pack up that polka-dot rucksack).

In the meantime, I should really unpack the rest of my earth-stuff.

cruising

Right before I got back on the boat, after passing aisles of knick knacks and cheap souvenirs stacked in haphazard heaps, I stopped and bought a Cuban cigar.  On board, I spent twenty minutes smoking it in the wood-paneled library-esque cigar lounge situated just off the casino.  In addition to being the best twenty minutes of my cruise (except for the part where I was almost hit by a mock pirate ship while snorkeling in Aruba), it also gave me a chance to reflect on the strange feeling I had experienced a couple of days before that, a feeling that only be described as one of death, creeping up on me.

No, nothing to do with the mock pirate ship that almost ran me over, snorkel and all, while the tourists on board snapped pictures and pointed.  This feeling came upon me slowly, after a trip to the panoramic gym situated at the bow of the boat, after I had returned to the private area aptly called the "Sanctuary", which separated us from the other passengers by at least two barriers and one attendant.  Sitting in the extra-plush chair, looking out through the (strangely) blue tinted glass at the ocean beyond, a feeling of minor dread washed over me.  It was as if a small piece of my spirit had just detached, and floated away into the ether to rejoin the energy force that separates this world from the next.

Or, more likely, it was just  the norovirus kicking in.  You see, there was an outbreak on the boat.  Dozens of passengers who were naive (or ill) enough to see the ship's doctor about their condition were being quarantined in their rooms, while the rest of us whistled merrily on our way while working the posterior muscles through repetitive clench exercises.  Once I noticed that my stools had adjusted to our watery surroundings by imitating their consistency, the thought of exacerbating my already-horrendous cabin fever by getting detained in my actual cabin was enough to overcome any minor feelings of guilt I might have had about spreading the virus.  I was convinced that everyone and their convalescent mother (who was probably the source of the outbreak, bless her grubby little fingers) had contracted the virus, but wasn't telling.  Why then, should I?

Back in the cigar lounge, which ironically was probably the cleanest place on board the ship and therefore the least likely to exacerbate my rinovirus (bet you can't say that while keeping a straight face), I puffed away on the best $8 dollar cigar ever, and wondered how I had ended up on a cruise in the first place.

To be honest, I never expected to find myself on a cruise.  I always thought that the best depiction of people who go on cruises was the spaceship in Wall-E where people ride around on floating chairs and spend all of their time eating.  It's not that I hate the bourgeoisie - I have a communist cousin who has elected to represent our family at those events - but I do hate anyone who treats another human poorly, and cruise ships are rife with guilty parties.  At one point my wife and I were sitting at our lunch table watching a woman, another passenger, try to get the attention of the server, who was taking an order at another table.  As if she were a character on Downton Abbey, the hideous woman repeatedly pestered the server, who was obviously helping other passengers, until she finally put down her pen and walked over to the woman's table.  When the server reached the table, the woman arched her back and said shrilly "Do you really expect me to shout to get your attention?"  It was as if I was watching a very bad play, about very bad people... and it was a scene that repeated itself time and time again over the seven day voyage.  By the end of the trip I was tempted to start coughing on the desert tray on purpose (although I did not), to provide some needed oomph to a karmic power out there that obviously wasn't doing its job.

The funny thing about the outbreak (for those of us with sufficiently dark senses of humor) was that it happened simultaneously with what the Captain of the boat described as the "worst weather in 20 years of sailing the Caribbean."  It was truly awful.  If you spent half your morning in your room on the porcelain chin-rest (yes, it was a nice boat), it was hard to say whether it was due to grandma's germs in the jello, or because the boat was auditioning to be the Costa Concordia.  Although I don't get motion sickness, in hindsight I might have gotten some relief - and still avoided being imprisoned in my room - had I gone to the medical center complaining of wobbly legs, rather than wobbly buttocks.

Although I'm long over the norovirus, the memory of the cruise lingers on (notably in the injury I suffered to my leg in that gym with its blasted panoramic views).  I appreciated the opportunity to experience a cruise, but sometimes the memory of gazing out through those blue-tinted windows comes to me like a whispered word, mostly in the evenings, often accompanied by a feeling of homesickness and missing the ones that I love. Even though it would have been interesting to go out (dramatically) by being run over by a mock pirate ship, I think I'd prefer to end up aging slowly, at least to the point where I can be taken on a (second) cruise, and create my own norovirus outbreak by sneezing surreptitiously in the casserole, then watching in delight as the bourgeoisie succumb, and the staff smile knowingly as the boat rocks back and forth, while I puff slowly on my cigar and enjoy the moment.