PRESENT
Hello! I’ve been quiet here, but I’ve had some new subscribers over the past few months and wanted to give an official welcome. Welcome! This is a feelings-forward space: I’ve always used my online homes to capture emotions and indulge in a healthy dose of nostalgia. I work in product management and finance, and I keep meaning to somehow write about that but it turns out I prioritize vibes over anything else when it comes to my writing. That’s not likely to change any time soon.
FUTURE
One thing I will be writing about, though, is the process around creating my next novel, LIVING EXPENSES, which will be published by Invisible Publishing in spring 2025 (my older books are here). It took years to get to this point, times when I was actively writing and more time where I wasn’t, and is a period of time I’d like to share over the next few months. Let’s call it Bibliographic 3.0.
PAST
I didn’t want to write about moving. I wanted to live through a major life event without documenting it, but then the National released their latest album.
Back in early April I listened to it for the first time while I cleaned the kitchen— not in the everyday cleaning way, but the way you clean the house you’ve been living in for 11 years when you prepare it for strangers to come over and scrutinize it. I was on the floor wiping down the sides of the dishwasher, the underlip of the counter, wondering if it even mattered— the frantic nature of Toronto real estate means you have, like, 10 minutes to decide if you want to put an offer on a house; a sticky hidden dishwasher side is the least of your concerns— and the first song on the album, “Once Upon a Poolside” pierced through my thoughts. I can't keep track of everything I’m taking /
Everything is different, why do I feel the same? There I was, Magic Eraser in one hand, wiping away tears with the other.
Ugh, of course I’d have to write about moving.
The thing about moving out of a house you’ve lived in for 11 years is that there’s so much stuff. There are so many books. There are literal bowls of rocks you have to decide to pack or discard: rocks collected on long ago on beach walks you don’t fully remember, rocks that at one point you thought were heart-shaped but, like interpreting cloud formations, have morphed over time into something entirely different. And, of course, there are memories.
When I moved into the house I was in my early thirties and married. We didn’t have kids or a cat. I drove the silver Toyota Corolla I’d purchased when I started my first real job in the early 2000s. Now, leaving the house I’m in my mid-forties, not married. I have an 8 year old daughter. I have a cat, who will no longer be living with me, so I’m not sure if I have a cat? I recently bought my own car and it’s big enough to carry (not at the same time) many moving boxes, a 6 foot church pew, my daughter and two friends (at the same time). I don’t know what I expected when I moved into the house. Some of this, none of this.
There’s a line in my separation agreement that, when contemplating future events, says: Changes in their circumstances may be catastrophic, unanticipated or beyond their imagination.
I moved out of the house before the sale closed, but occasionally had to go back to clean or pick up remaining items, and I was always struck by how quickly it shifted from something that was mine to not, like a spirit or soul had been exhaled. Same address, but not the place where I paced around when I was coaxing labour, where I worked at the dining room table during the pandemic, where we used to invite people over for food and beer and wine and loud music.
There’s this part from the George Seferis poem, “Thrush”:
I don’t know much about houses
I know they have their own nature, nothing else.
New at first, like babies
who play in gardens with the tassels of the sun,
they embroider coloured shutters and shining doors
over the day.
When the architect’s finished, they change,
they frown or smile or even grow resentful
with those who stayed behind, with those who went away
with others who’d come back if they could
or others who disappeared, now that the world’s become
an endless hotel.
I think our house will smile about us. Things weren’t perfect, but they were often good. At the very least it was cozy and full of life. There was some satisfaction in scrubbing it down in preparation for strangers, etching away the grime that had accumulated, for better or for worst, over 11 years.
I didn’t want to leave any trace of it—the past— behind: it belongs only to us, ours to share and divide up and forget or remember.
Welcoming more posts from you. A long time fan from Montreal :)