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I am not a waiter.

By that, I don’t mean I do not work in a restaurant serving meals. Truth be told, in the past, I have indeed waiter waited; I did not do that well either. In the end I’d describe myself as an optimistic misanthrope; I like individuals, I just find humankind as a whole pretty overrated. That kind of outlook doesn’t serve one well in the hospitality industry. But I digress…that is not what this is about.

No, I mean waiting, as in passing time until something that is going to happen, happens. I do not wait well. It stresses me out.

The constriction of waiting. This is what leaves and flowers must feel as they are pushing, groping their way into bloom; aching through hard ground, unveilding wood until finally, finally released, they unfurl into relief.

Here is the misconception about waiting: it seems a passive endeavor. It is nothing of the sort. Waiting is an extremely active thing. It is like a race car, engine revving, wheels spinning, but with the brakes held firm, anticipating that moment of release, building up tension, energy, until released, it shoots from the starting line like a madman pursued by screaming demons.

A bit dramatic perhaps, but nonetheless true, for me anyway.

This Co-op buying experience that Jamie and I have been going through has been 10% active and 90% waiting. And it’s been going on for months. And we will continue on in stasis until next week. Until next week. He sees a light at the end of the tunnel, he sees the light changing from red to yellow and oh so soon to green. His foot tingles at the thought of lifting from the brake. He senses relief coming like a cool breeze on a stagnant summer day. He sees an end to the waiting.

This is not buying a toaster. One cannot walk into a store, pick up a home and head to the checkout. It’s a long, drawn out process. It is a process that is maddening to the bad waiters of the world. And yet…

Soon Jamie and I will have a home that we can call “ours”. And while it’s true that our current rental is our home, the Co-op will be our home. A place owned that we can make our own.

And that, my friends, is worth every bit of the wait.

Nite,
k.

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Tags: Jamie, Life, Moving, NYC by Kirk
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As I passingly mentioned in my last post, (see, already I’m not procrastinating!) Jamie and I are packing up our apartment in preparation for our move to our new home. Or rather, what hopefully will be our new home should we ever get a closing date. With luck, we will have that date in stone sometime this coming week.

This is a major move, not that we are moving far. We’re not moving out of state. We’re not even moving out of the City. No, we’re moving about a 15 minute walk north of where we are now. We are moving from Manhattan to The Bronx.

Now, while many Manhattanites would see the move from this fair island to the northernmost mainland borough as a major change, that’s not what makes it a major change for me. In the twenty years I’ve lived in NY, I’ve lived in 4 apartments in Manhattan, 3 in Brooklyn and even lived for awhile across the mighty Hudson in Bloomfield, NJ.

What makes this move different is this: I have always been a renter. Now, I will be an owner. Or rather, Jamie and I will be owners.

And so, it was decided that we would purge. Well, Jamie would purge and I would purge a lot. You see, when Jamie’s and my life came together oh those eight years ago, he had stuff and I had… stuff. I had stuff on shelves, I had stuff in closets, I had stuff in boxes that I hadn’t opened in years. We, collectively, had lots of stuff.

When we moved from Brooklyn to our current apartment, it was a fairly quick move and so the pre-move purging process was omitted. Omitted to the point that all our stuff wouldn’t fit into the huge moving truck that we had hired and so the next day we had to rent a van to move the rest of it from place to place. That’s a lot of stuff.

This time, however, due to the drawn out process of buying, we have had ample time to cull the wheat from the chaff (understanding, of course, that even in that process some chaff will inevitably remain, but still…). This has been much easier for Jamie than I. Jamie doesn’t really care for stuff. He cares more about it than he thinks he does, but he is not committed to stuff in the way I am.

Some stuff is useful stuff, stuff that is used. No problems there.

Some stuff is more insidious, it is useful, maybe not right now, but someday, it could be of use.

This stuff is fairly easy to release. It’s been in a box for any number of years and still you haven’t found a use for it. Or else, you are just being foolishly cheap, no one needs 5 bottles of glue or three hundred pens, or even one replacement head for a Sonicare that died months ago. Small twinges of anxiety with some of these tossings, but really, not much.

Other stuff is stuff of memory, of emotion: that cheap plastic flower X gave you X years ago, those cards another X sent you, professing eternal love and committment (and we now see how that turned out), that notepad from a hotel in Berlin from your days on tour; these are the things that seem to have memory locked within them and when gazed upon, they transport you to another time, another life.

These things, as (appropriately ironic, I now realize) the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father said, “Oh horrible, most horrible.” How can I ever rid myself of these? It seems a betrayal of one’s past. Tossing away these things would be like tossing away a part of myself.

But hold on a moment there, Petey, these things don’t magically hold any memories, they are as dead as last year’s Thanksgiving turkey; you hold the memories. If you can’t conjure up a memory of something without this inanimate mojo, then most likely, it’s better forgotten.

That was the lesson I learned, am still learning, with these moving preparations. It has been a very difficult, very necessary and in the end, very freeing lesson. I urge everyone to throw out something they think they couldn’t possibly part with. It is the most liberating thing I’ve done in a long, long while.

And the rest of the stuff is just cool stuff. That stuff is definitely going to Da Bronx.

Nite.
k.

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Tags: General, Jamie, Life, Moving, NYC by Kirk
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