Moving day - that one physical assault on the senses that makes you feel exhausted, incontinent and elated all at once - is so stressful an event that the fear of it affects me every day of the year. “Should I get that lamp?” I might ask. “No,” my Russian inner-demon Helena might answer, “you’ll just have to get a bubble wrap and box so vat is point?” Every purchase is shelved and cross-referenced against a chart of how difficult the object would be in a move. Glasses? Sure. An ornamental birdcage? No. It’s like when you’re in a flea market while on holiday and see something precious but realise that you only have a one-suitcase allowance so it’s probably not in your best interest to buy a working model of the solar system fashioned out of macaroni.
Life, I realised a few years ago, is my limited baggage allowance, and I am sick of being scared of it. But mainly I am sick of having beige, non-committal furniture.
I am, as you know, moving apartments. As I type this, I am surrounded by boxes stacked around me like moldy skyscrapers stuffed with socks I never knew were under the sofa. Indeed, if you have ever lost anything in your life I would suggest you look under the sofa. So far I have unearthed three jackets, two sweaters, five unopened candy bars, two pairs of underwear and a book. I should be used to the ordeal since this is my third move in 18 months, not including the emotionally draining but alcoholically rewarding relocation from Lahore to New York before that.
Considered properly, I think I have moved places every single year since the age of 18. That is except for my home Bridgebottom in Lahore, where I have been a resident troll pretty much consistently for three years now. But Bridgebottom doesn’t count since I keep the redoing the rooms, and so it feels like living in a perpetual state of motion anyway. I used to think the frequent moving was just a “student” phase of my life. Most of my friends did the same thing along the same timeline as I did so there was a sense of camaraderie to the whole nightmare. We would all buy boxes together and have a packing/dance/wine/crying party that could last well into the night. But now everyone else is growing out of their student phases, settling down into what seem like permanent homes and lives. They are buying houses or flats or creating sections in their parents’ houses that they are quite content to think of as their homes for the next decade if not more. The thought scares the hell out of me but I envy that kind of commitment to one place.
'Moving On' by Walter Gurbo - acrylic on arches paper - 13 x 10 inches - Drawing Room Series - Village Voice Years
Life, I realised a few years ago, is my limited baggage allowance
The student phase allowed me a certain delusion that what I wanted out of life - freedom to move around, excitement at the unknown, the wonderful feeling of being unanchored - was also what everyone else wanted. To a certain extent it is what everyone else wants too. Now that I have both feet firmly planted in my thirties, I can see that people are trying to lay down roots and erect the benign scaffolding that will support the weight of their future dreams. They do this, I am told, because there is a real fear that one day you wake up and find that the feeling that everything is yet to come in your life has suddenly vanished, and you are left looking backwards at the journey you never knew you were on.
That may well be true, but it’s hella depressing and I for one chose not to believe it. An Italian friend of mine once told me that he began traveling around the world when he was 18. A few months into his journey, his father passed away and so he came home to ask his mother whether he should put his plans on hold and move back in with her. She turned to him and said, “Ti ho fatto con le gambe, non con le radici” which loosely translates as “I made you with legs, not with roots.” The phrase always stuck with me, both for its beauty and as a reminder that moving forward is exactly what adult life is about.
While we are on the subject, adult life is also being trapped in a never-ending email chain that all starts with “I’m so sorry for the delay in my response…” until the end of time. That and a never-ending volley with your computer in which it asks you to update and you say no and then it asks whether it should remind you about it in ten minutes or maybe the next day and all you want to do is throw it out the open window while shouting: “I want to watch your corpse burn in the embers of my hatred!”
