MovingForgetting, but with momentum.
A body turned to ash and placed in a box, to be placed in another box to be moved. The envelope and its contents, our envelope and her contents. With placement carefully picked, the physical exertion can begin with backs bent to shoulder the weight of the box - new place, new box to live in with our old boxes of contentment. A waiting weight. A concentric series, little Matryoshka doll: the first holds the people with their movement and breath, the second holds their containers which hold their belongings, inward again into another box: the belongings themselves contain within their rigid forms some misty ethereal ghostliness. The small pine box - dust. And the old box now vacant? Just dust, too. Gradually we made a grave of it, and the body does decay into nothing but the walls still surround that nothing. It soon transforms into the same thing: oh small tomb, little marker for remembering - housed within those walls are the see through spirits of lost time, chronologically reversed. A nineteen year old boy is unpacking optimistically as a forethought of his past, passed. As movement implies arrival at some newness, there is also contained in that kernel some small content, the departure point that is entered back into only upon leaving. The act of packing prompts an instant reflection of unpacking - when we meet one we recall the other. Time gets bookended, the packing become the paranthesis which surround a life's sentence. Movement is the escape from this sentence, this punishment.
We moved slow, each item at a time until all that was left was the dust on the floors and walls, and the invisible little splatters of forgotten failure and mistake which mingle with the sunlit space and become as much apart of it as the window or door. Eventually, the boxes stacked, all was done save for the one last corner, purposefully overlooked. You know that song, you do: there are corners of your heart that you've never noticed before. Dear box of needles, dear last utensil, an injection of memory and a container full of dust. At the windows, at the windows; a last little breakdown, some small slip and for a moment the swell swayed and the stupid boxes burst, tearducts evacuated their salty contents and even that wetness dries in time. We moved, we had to move on, and all I threw away was garbage. Some vague recollection: being 19 and moving in, all prudish with potential, a nest to build with sticks and fluff, happy cat and happy vandal - swept to the corner, tossed down the chute.
Where is home?
Well, dear thing, it is where you are. The walls are the skin and the room is the body, and inside you is where the home is held, close and dear. It is where you are. Home is the small, safe corner of your heart that we choose to live in, and movement is absolutely neccessary to get there. Trading a box for a box, bringing boxes into boxes, just a bunch of containers for contentment. It is funny how happy we are to bring one box and how sad we are to discard the other.
