(Another Post about) Packing, Moving, Getting Rid of Things. (Or: Goodbye, Bronx. Hello, Queens!)

(I tried to connect this to other things, but it didn’t work.  So, this is another mundane moving-time post about sifting through things, throwing things out, and trying to pack…)

I will be moving from my present place to the new one pretty soon.  I’d rather not say exactly when (since I’m not even really sure myself), but it might be a little later than some people would like me to move.  Not much later, but just a little, and I doubt that there will be any consequences from that…

Unfortunately, though, I haven’t even begun packing, not to any great extent, and I definitely should have by now.  Each move seems to catch me more unprepared, which I like to think is the consequence of bad circumstances rather than an inability to “get my shit together” and that sort of thing.

This time around I have decided, more than ever before, that I really need to give up a lot of books.  The easiest thing for me to part with, actually, is the fiction books, which has been the case for the past several years.  Maybe that’s because I feel little need to reread any of the fiction or even refer to it (except to find a particular Ballard of Kafka passage - for example - to quote sometime)… 

The political books are still much harder for me to part with…  One would think that given the decline of my activism (along with everyone else’s), I might have been a little more able to part with some of the writings and ideas that first inspired me.  But that’s not true at all, mysteriously enough.   Unfortunately,  with the sort of life that I’m leading, I can’t exactly have a huge and comprehensive library in front of me all the time.

I’ve already dragged about 25 political books to someone’s house in Brooklyn, where I think they will be used for a worthy cause sometime in the near future, hopefully.  (I won’t go any more into that now.  But suffice to say, I would have been happy to bring 35 or 40 books if I thought I could manage them on the ride from the 6 train in The Bronx to the L train in Manhattan and all the way over to the Grand Street station in East Williamsburg/Bushwick, near the border between Brooklyn and Queens.  I probably could have done that, actually.  But I wimped out and brought only 25 or so, if that many.)  However, I still do have well more than twice that many books remaining, and it’s going to be difficult to leave most of those behind.

I’m thinking that it probably would not do me well to unearth all my political books right away at the place where I’m going, because the new roommate has no knowledge of my political leanings, and who knows what will freak a roommate out.  (Most other signs seem to indicate a good arrangement, but as I’ve learned, you never know what will happen, and when you’re eager for somebody to let you move into a place, you can’t exactly cover everything.)  However, while I’ve learned to be less in people’s faces about my politics (at least at first - I think…), these very important interests are a big part of me that I cannot permanently hide.  And, I still will want books to have around that I can refer to quite a bit without having to search for them on the Net.  So, I probably will keep at least a couple of well-filled boxes of books.

I’ve also been sifting through my CDs, going through some similar anguish in some cases.  However, the job of sifting has been made somewhat easier by the fact that I never took such good care of my CDs and many of those that are a decade old or older are unplayable anyway.  

Along the same lines, I have to think about my old records…  I’ve already cut my vinyl collection to about one third over the years, but I’m thinking of cutting it down to less than a quarter of that…  Maybe one out of four milk crates…  Will I be able to do that?  It will be kind of tough, but like many people, I hardly play my old records anyway (and I rarely splurge on the hip new 12″ single these days), so it might be just as well.  Especially since many of those are also pretty well trashed…  Of course, they could come in handy if I decide to take up turntablism - but once again, I can’t really plan for every possibility, especially when I need to move light.

And there is the computer…  My plan right now is to just dump the computer and get a new computer right after I’ve moved.  But it’s going to take some courage, because I am so addicted to this thing that just the brief step of physically parting with one model of computer before replacing it might be a somewhat traumatic experience for me.  Plus, do I have the courage to part with the $500 or so?  Sure, the money is actually there, for the first time in a long time.  But I could easily just spend $500 right away on my broken teeth.  (Sometimes I like to imagine what life would be like if I lived in a country that had universal, single-payer health coverage and I didn’t always have that sort of problem to think about.  But that’s for another post…)  

On the other hand, I have waited long enough and, the way things happen with me, if I don’t make this decision to dump the computer then I’ll spend the extra time and energy dragging this heavy antique over to the new place only to discover that it hasn’t survived the move.  Or it will blow right after I get there, since it’s been threatening to blow (with a thousand “Fatal Exception” messages) for well over a year.  So, I am going to replace it, right away.   I am.   I keep having to tell that to myself…

Next will be the question of the blog…  Once I’ve moved and have gotten a new computer, will I celebrate these events by doing something new with the blog?  Maybe I will split it up a little after all instead of leaving this increasingly schizophrenic blog exactly the way it is as the ratings continue to hemorrhage (even though I am getting good comments here and there).

Oh, well.  All things to be worked out in the very near future…

When I am in Queens.

That’s right.  I am really moving to Queens.  I’ve had my heart set on this idea for a couple of months now.  Probably, first of all, because I’ve never lived in Queens before; it’s the only borough in New York City that I’ve never lived in, while I have spent extensive periods of time residing in Staten Island, Brooklyn, Manhattan and The Bronx.  Plus, I am moving to the place where Woodside borders on Jackson Heights…which means only about ten blocks away from the two or three streets that have the best cheap Indian restaurants in New York.  (This is a fact I heard about more than ten years ago - but one that  I only confirmed fairly recently, during the resurgence of my desiphilia.)

And there’s one place in particular, over on 74th Street, that has the greatest salt lassis…  Yes, I am moving to a neighborhood to be within walking distance of a good lassi.  That may seem a little trivial at first glance, but then again…  It seems like as good a reason as any other to move into a neighborhood.

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P.S.  OK, I’m being a little unnecessarily wry in the last paragraph above.   I do like this neighborhood for other reasons…  I think Woodside and Sunnyside are both pretty charming in odd ways.   For instance, I like the way they have those great little community parks right under the elevated 7 line - you don’t see that in many other parts of New York (and the “els” in The Bronx just seem so much uglier for some reason)…  And there’s a matter of the population…  I said I like diversity, and you can’t get more diverse than these neighborhoods in Queens!  So, altogether, the neighborhood should be a very nice experience.  Now, just need to cross my fingers (even though I don’t believe in that sort of thing) about the living situation…