I Hate Moving

I hate fucking moving. Everything about it. Yet I can't escape it, it's been with me all my life. By the time I was a year old, ONE, I had already moved, probably more than once. By the time I was three, I'd moved again. Five? Moved. Six was fine, but seven? Moved. Twice.

That was the beginning of a sequence where we'd move either six times in five years or five in six, I'm not sure, but always in the same neighbourhood - all within a few blocks.

And then... all through high school... just one house. The house of my dreams, as it were, with a basement, a main floor that housed a living room (with a fireplace), a dining room, a kitchen, a toilet and a large vestibule (in addition to front and back porches), and a second floor that had three rooms, a front porch and a back veranda. Old, natural wood - everywhere.

But as soon as high school was over, more moving. A year across from NDG park where, younger, I'd spent most of my days playing hockey in the winter and baseball in the summer - and hanging with my dope-dealing friends. Then a year back on Melrose - across the street from my dream house - a tease, as it were.

Then my apartment in the Plateau - the one that good flooded when the Ice Storm hit, in January of '98.

Then came, more or less, a series of more-or-less crashing at people's places and couch-surfing that led me everywhere from Île Perrot to NYC to Pointe-Aux-Trembles to the Plateau again (with many a night in Ste-Julie), before settling in in the neighbourhood I am in now, just in time for New Year's 2000...

But, of course, staying in the same 'hood doesn't mean I didn't change apartments... De Rouen, Logan, Fullum, Joliette, Ontario...5 places in a little over 9 years. And unless something drastic and dramatic happens in the relatively near future, it looks like I'll have to move again in the next 6 months or so.

And moving's such a bitch on some many levels. Packing and unpacking (for a while, I just left most of my stuff in boxes 'cause I knew I'd be out of there before long), either getting people to help out or finding movers, who always happen to cost close to the same as the first month's rent.

And now, after years of alternating living on my own, with roommates, with girlfriends - I have more furniture than my cats and I need, and a whole floor of things I care more about than furniture packed in boxes because I have no room for them on the main floor. And, ironically, that's the stuff I'm trying to get rid of, to sell - everything I have that has some value and that doesn't fit as decoration on my walls and desks. And they're in boxes already, yeah, but I'm no longer sure if all the good stuff's in its own box or if it's mixed with the more common useless stuff, and the only way to find out is to open and empty the boxes...

A few years back, I tried to clear my head and be able to get rid of most of my material possessions. I had over 3000 CDs and 4 guitars, and was so proud of them; I couldn't imagine myself leaving them behind. Now, with the advent of 1TB hard drives, who needs CDs when a backsack of hard drives can house even more music than that? But then, what do I do with the CDs themselves, with the thousands of dollars I put in them?

But I can slip a few hard drives in a bag, and carry an electric and an acoustic guitar and be on my merry way, with little attachments, should the need arise. All I need to do, if I can, is get rid of my other electric and my bass - and my keyboard. That used to bother me, but no longer.

If I could sell my superfluous stuff, maybe I'd buy a laptop and move back to NYC, or couch-surf for a few months. Or head to Gaspésie and shack up for winter. But with a protable computer, portable music, and a couple of guitars, I think I could be happy and make do with anything that would arise.

I think.

I hope.