We've moved again. It was a choice prompted by what might best be described as a hostile take-over by a new landlord. It made a lot more sense to move, than to deal with him. The result is that we're now in an apartment that costs $400/mo less than what the takeover guy wanted for that last apartment. Savings is nice, but the kicker is that the new place (though a bit smaller) is better by far than the old apartment, even with no dishwasher, and no laundry hook-up.

I'm looking at a box labeled ‘Liquor is quicker’ – a reminder of my upbeat, tongue-in-cheek attitude during an earlier move. I'd read Philip K. Dick's ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ that year, which inspired me to label several of my boxes ‘kipple.’

This time around, the labels are more functional: ‘Office: electronics,’ ‘Oversize magazines,’ ‘Closet: winter coats...’ Not very warm and fuzzy, but they helped get the boxes into the right rooms and also steered me toward which boxes need to be opened sooner, and which ones can wait.

As I write this, I'm on hold with Earthlink's DSL department. I submitted my move request online and the order got lost, which means I'm starting over. They're quoting me 10-15 days turnaround, which is a lot of high-speed withdrawal. Looks like the laptop and I are going to have to make friends with as many wi-fi networks as we can.

Tomorrow morning, someone is supposed to come to install the DirecTV dish. The installer was a no-show on Friday, when I think I became collateral damage in a little gamesmanship between the installer (subcontractor) and DirecTV. The installer's dispatcher told me that the guy had left my area about seven hours earlier [my appointment window was only four hours...], and that he wouldn't be returning, because they were no longer contractors for DirecTV! It was the last business day before the Memorial Day weekend, and perhaps that company's last day as a DirecTV installer. No matter. There's been plenty to do for the last several days, without the distractions of the big tube.

Moving stirs up memories. I've been visited by the ghosts of moves past: my first move after college; my long drive down to New York from Boston in a Ryder truck, paid for by my employer; a harrowing move from Jersey City to Park Slope; shipping several boxes of stuff back to an ex-girlfriend; and moving from the third floor to the duplex garden apartment on the first, mostly on my own — that was a cool experience.

The memories of those moves and others are connected to memories of college, of friendships, and even successes and failures. Boxes of personal items have become time capsules. It's amazing the stuff that you keep, and how the stuff you keep seems hard-wired to the moments of your life.

Every move becomes a chance to remember, and a chance to let go: we threw away a lot of stuff, and quibbled a bit over some things that we kept (e.g. ‘Have you ever even touched this in the last 5 years?’). But the point is to have a nice place to live, not a crowded shrine to the past. In every move, I contend with things scratched, bent, broken, left behind, discarded, or lost. In a sense, every move is cathartic.

The new place is beautiful, and marks the opening of a new chapter. There's no garden, but there is a nice balcony...