It’s stressful to move in the middle of a pandemic. But it’s got to be done. I am now living in the midst of total fucking chaos, in preparation for the movers. I had to have my bookshelves taken apart. I hired my Task Rabbit guy – Casey – he’s the best! He put together some furniture for me last February – right before we went into lockdown. As he worked, we talked, and he told me about his other gig, as a referee for high school sports. He said there was more work in that sector than he could even handle. He had to turn gigs down. When the lockdown came – Task Rabbit shut down for a while (except for no-contact delivery services) and I found myself thinking of Casey on occasion. Clearly there were no more high school sports either. I hoped he was doing okay. So when the time came to move and I needed someone to dismantle my bookshelves he was my first call.
First order of business, though, was to take all the books OFF the shelves. The sitution almost instantly became totally unmanageable.
Room 1:
Room 2:
Chaos. Although there is a method to my madness. I am putting a third of this into storage. I am donating another third. I’m keeping the rest with me. (I’m also bad at math.) So now once they’re all out of the shelves, I can start the organization process (which I’ve done), separating things out into piles of Keep. Storage. Donate.
As I wander through the maze of my apartment, I’d glance down at this or that pile, and laugh, at the randomness of the books on the top of each pile. A cross-section of my personality.
That right there tells you pretty much all you need to know about me, including the glimpse of Reinventing Your Life, a CBT-handbook of sorts, recommended to me by my mood disorder doc. I went into it skeptical. Skeptical? I sneered at my doc, “You people. This therapy thing is a fucking RACKET.” Granted, I was rapid-cycling and that is why I was talking like I was in a 1930s gangster movie. But I bought the thing, did all the exercises, and yeah, it changed everything for me. So oh well.
Then there were the DVDs piled up. I will never EVER give up my physical media. Streaming doesn’t have everything. Can you stream Christopher Strong any time you want to see it? And if you’re me, you want to see it all the time? I can answer for you: NO. You canNOT. I do not trust the landlords. Streaming is filled with recency bias. Old stuff suffers. Fuck the corporations. I OWN my shit. You don’t get to decide FOR me when – or if – I get to see things.
Speaking of Bubba Ho-Tep, Elvis of course gets his own corner, with two towering piles all to himself. He’s coming with me. Of course. This pile includes movies, box sets, a couple of comic books, every book I own about him, as well as a book given to me by Pat McCurdy (we discussed Elvis once), called IS ELVIS ALIVE?, complete with cassette tape shrink-wrapped to the front, a tape which supposedly has a recording of the still-alive Elvis.
And of all the movies to be sitting on top of the Elvis pile … It just worked out that way.
I will miss this place. It’s my favorite place of all the places I’ve lived. It’s a horrible neighborhood, and – quite frankly – dangerous – like, sometimes I hear gunfire late at night dangerous – but the place itself is beautiful and peaceful, and cheap (because of said gunfire) – so I have what is basically a two-bedroom apartment for almost nothing. I have been able to stretch out here in a way I’ve never been able to do before. I’ve framed a lot of things and hung them all over the walls. I’ve been able to put things on display – coffee table books, I love – which I’ve never had space for before. It’s my place. It’s also the only place I’ve lived in where I’ve been well the whole time. My old apartment was filled with “bad juju” from the day I moved in. I never fully moved in there. I was so so so sick for the first years I lived there (2009-2012). So the place felt marked by how sick I was. Here, I’ve been well the whole time. And so there’s a peace here, I feel comfortable here. Plus, there’s Covid. We’re coming up on a year of this nightmare. I spent months alone here, without ever seeing people, with going out only to the grocery store. My emotional bond to this place is INTENSE. Also … there’s Hope. I miss her so much. This place is so full of her. I am still finding remnants of her in this move. Even little fur balls behind the bookshelves. That’s her. She didn’t die here, she died in Rhode Island, and the place has never felt the same to me ever since I came back. I spent the fall in Rhode Island anyway, quarantining with my sister. So in a way I’ve already separated myself from this place. But I miss Hope. Here she is on our first night in this new apartment. She was SO STRESSED OUT. But once the bed was set up, she knew where her place was.
Such a good good girl.
I’m so sick of moving. But everyone’s moving now. At least in the New York tri-state area. It’s amazing I was even able to book a mover on such short notice. Everyone is fleeing the scene.
Onward. I write to you from the midst of total fucking chaos. By this time next week it’ll all be over and done with. Hard to imagine.
Bubba Ho-tep! That movie was so much fun.
I think you are right for recognizing that owning physical media is important. People can try to memorize books in a Fahrenheit 451 way, but you can’t do that for movies or music. Look what happened to artists who trusted the Universal Music Group. UMG didn’t even notify people that their masters had burned.
Sheila, I hope the actual move is problem-free and that you find health and comfort in your new place.
Yes, the masters! God, what a tragedy.
As much as I have enjoyed my iPod – I do regret handing over such power to mac -to iTunes – I have so much shit I uploaded to iTunes in the early days – I uploaded all of my CDs – ack, I had such blind trust in the new landlord … it was my music collection I have gathered over the years. and now … it’s being “held” by a landlord, and I have no recourse if they decide to shut iTunes down or … make it so that ONLY stuff I bought shows up. I don’t know the options. I’d like to get all my stuff off of that platform and somewhere else – but since it’s a mix of stuff I bought from the iTunes store, and mp3s and uploaded CDs I don’t know the solution.
And I will not use Spotify. I am opposed to Spotify.
I realize technology has moved past me but I like having collections of things.
I’m old-fashioned. I don’t need to have all music at my fingertips. I like to know I’ve bought it, picked it.
I regret moving to iTunes for this very reason – suddenly you are beholden to this corporation that doesn’t care anything about you. This level of technology starts to destroy the whole CONCEPT of ownership. If I bought it, it’s MINE. But not in this new world. I keep saying to myself, “You really need to get your music off of there somehow” – I’m sure there’s a very complicated hack to get this done. But it worries me!
And there’s so many movies that aren’t streaming! With every uptick in technology, more has been lost. There was more stuff available on VHS than on DVD – the switch to Blu-Ray and then streaming – less and less stuff made the transfer. This is intolerable to me. So I’m very glad I didn’t hand over my power to technology, at least on that front!!
Oh, and thank you about the move! It’s of course stressful but … I’m making my way through. Light at the end of the tunnel! and thank God for Task Rabbit. :)
Did you enjoy Clooney’s “The American”?
I loved it! I think I wrote about it here somewhere. I was completely baffled by the negative critical response. I think it’s fantastic.
I did too. I thought it had a certain tone reminiscent of mid to late 60s films starring McQueen or Lee Marvin
yes I agree – good call – it was very old-school.
Cool to see my favourite blogger is moving at the exact same time I am. Sat here writing with cardboard boxes all around me. Also cool seeing the Extras box-set there. I’m from UK and didn’t realise many people in the US had watched the older Gervais shows. Did you enjoy it?
Blue –
I absolutely adored Extras! I was a huge fan of the British Office – but Extras was something very different. I think the David Bowie episode was my favorite – excruciating but sooo funny. I have been meaning to watch it again! I have forgotten a lot about it, but Kate Winslet in full habit demonstrating dirty talk is still a high point. Humorously too – her comment in the episode about how you only win an Oscar when you do a Holocaust movie … what did Winslet finally win for? A Holocaust movie. lol Oh, and the Orlando Bloom episode! I still maintain that that is Orlando Bloom’s best performance!
Good luck with your move! I’m trying to REMAIN CALM. in ALL CAPS. lol
Have you read the Gilbert Frankau novel that the film Christopher Strong is based on? It was published in 1932. In the novel, the primary female character was a racing car driver in the series which would become known as Formula One. The film changed her to a pilot. I am reading at it, but my reading has been fragmented by the Covid 19, so its still on the TBR pile.
Also this morning while browsing a really big book place, this book appeared which could be amusing: Art Popular Culture and the Classical Ideal in the 1930s: A Study of Roman Scandals and Christopher Strong: Includes the Unfinished Autobiography of Dorothy Arzner by David Soren. Just think of all the empty shelf spaces you will have to fill after the move!
WOW. I haven’t read either of those books – fascinating! Because I wrote about Dance Girl Dance for Criterion earlier this year I spent a lot of time watching Arzner’s films (always loved her work!)
Both books sound so interesting!
Oh wow, it seems like no time since the last move with the Russian (?????) guys you hired to move your books who APPROVED of the amount of books you had.
Hope all goes well this time round too!
yes those RUSSIANS were amazing. The scooped up those 40 boxes of books like they were nothing. I don’t know why I feel embarrassed. I’m sure other people have all kinds of crazy shit THEY want moved. Buffalo heads, Nazi memorabilia, I don’t know.
Thanks – the move is bearing down on me! Can’t stop it now!