The Myth of the Breeze

This is not my beautiful house.

Stay­ing put is sim­ply not in my nature. In 25 (nearly 26) years of life, I have lived in 17 dif­fer­ent res­i­dences. My pack­ing abil­i­ties are sharp, quick, and well orga­nized. I’ve adopted my mother’s obses­sion of hardly sleep­ing until each item of fur­ni­ture is in its place and each dec­o­ra­tion is prop­erly hung on the wall. The instinct arises from the need to find my place within each new space I occupy in light of its imper­ma­nence. For some, the instinct is the oppo­site. Carry few pos­ses­sions and never entirely set­tle in, lest you find your­self in need of a speedy escape. But in under­stand­ing that each place in which I find myself will only last so long, my urge is to furi­ously set­tle, to dig deeply into the soil and ensure I am secure and upright.

Despite the urgency in set­tling, the equal and oppo­site force to leave quickly arises. Per­haps it stems from a life of mov­ing around. In order to prop­erly mark the end of the sea­son, the pas­sage of time, I must sort through each pos­ses­sion and decide which are expend­able. I must clean my rugs and dust off my books, finally get­ting rid of those I know I will never read and those I never liked but kept around because they looked so nice on the shelf.

I was not expect­ing the urge to move to take hold again this year. And yet, come March I found myself in search of some­where else. A month ago today I left the coun­try­side in favor of a man­age­able com­mute and a house full of close friends. And con­trary to my obses­sive ten­den­cies for every­thing in its place, there is one piece of art that has yet to find a place on the wall. Well, it has a place, but I have yet to hang it. The image is an aer­ial pho­to­graph of cen­tral Los Ange­les that I pulled from the closet of my old job. On the bot­tom left is down­town LA, with shal­low shad­ows cast down the north­east side of the build­ings. The LA River runs through the cen­ter of the image and trick­les down to a dry ditch around LA’s indus­trial cor­ri­dor. Dodger Sta­dium and its mam­moth park­ing lot sit heav­ily at the top of the pho­to­graph in the midst of the hills of Elysian Park. Fol­low­ing Sun­set Boule­vard toward the west and to the far left of the pho­to­graph leads to the edge of Echo Park. And nes­tled next to it is Laguna Avenue and my old house.

My friend and for­mer house­mate crafted an incred­i­ble frame for the photo, and warned me to use the proper anchors before putting it on the wall. I’ve pur­chased the anchors, but can’t seem to hang the damn photo. As it stands (atop the chest which holds most of my nos­tal­gia inside it), Echo Park is at eye level and I glance it each time I pass between my bed­room and bath­room. I fear hang­ing the photo and my old neigh­bor­hood mov­ing just above my line of vision.

For the most part, I am irked by my yearly urge to move. I think that there must be another way to chan­nel my anx­i­ety and com­mit­ment fears. But I think about Los Ange­les every­day, and need Echo Park at eye level, to know that thoughts of mov­ing back can still equate mov­ing for­ward, that fear of miss­ing out can be left as the com­fort­ing feel­ing that I miss and that I am missed.