Boxes engulf me.
My family and I arrived in our
new hometown of Seattle five weeks ago. Since then, our living space has been
dissected and cordoned and blocked by stacks of boxes four and five high.
Although the walls are gradually receding, they yet remain, constant reminders
of our unfinished transition. Boxes form walls beyond walls.
Our apartment is small—smaller
than our apartment back in Connecticut and much smaller than our house
immediately prior in New Hampshire. Although we have purged many of our
belongings, we still own a lot—a lot more than we can easily store. Squeezing
into a small apartment is one of the prices we pay for locating in a happening,
urban neighborhood in a happening, urban locale. I love the choice we made. But
it brought living conditions that constrain us daily.
Our crampedness most affects me
when I sit down to write. I suffer from writer’s cramp. I still haven’t
uncovered the small table that will serve as my desk, and so I work at the half–dining
room table that we’ve managed to unfold. Or, I write in coffee houses, as I
have throughout my adult life. I don’t yet have a writing space in our home. I
want a writing space, and I don’t yet have one.
Don’t get me wrong: merely living
in this magnificent city excites me continuously. But, as of now, the environs
inside my home don’t prod and support my writing the way my outer environs do. Right
now, I’m not a Seattle writer—I’m a cramped writer.
Downsizing profoundly has shown
me how dependent I am on comfortable writing space. I never really thought
about it before, probably because I didn’t have to. Now I know. I need to
spread out my books and papers; I need to stretch out my body; I sometimes need
to pace back and forth like a first-time expectant father. I didn’t realize
that these were my preconditions for free, fluid writing. Now I know.
In their way, boxes are
wonderful. They foretell of unpacked joys of sorting through books removed from
their old order on their previous shelves—books that will become new again, as
if appearing for the first time. I am grateful for the content inside these
boxes. But, for the moment, these boxes make my life a bit too boxy. My inner writer
roars in anticipation of roaming free inside a cage free from clutter.
