Tuesday, December 18, 2007

driving in my new apartment (or: books really swing my verge)


Today, Gentle Readers, I am executing three-point turns in my living room. Except that instead of driving a car, I am shoving bookshelves around, and instead of edging around parked cars, I am maneuvering around Leaning Towers of Boxes.

Yup! Our shipment has arrived! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The movers brought everything yesterday, and now I sit in what seems, on the surface, to be utter chaos, but upon further inspection reveals itself instead to be utter chaos. ;o) This morning, I wanted to get a really good start at unpacking and finding places for things....but, to my dismay, I discovered that I hadn't a clue where to start. Ed was looking for something in particular last night, so I thought I'd apply myself to the task of uncovering the something's location...but the 'how' of this endeavor was a mystery and remains so even now.

Finally, I decided that I wasn't going to find anything specific (the rest of our towels and bedding would be nice) until I just started unpacking boxes at random. However, even starting at random proved to be a challenge. Ed came home briefly for lunch, and by then I was nearly in tears. He commiserated, but there wasn't a whole lot he could do at that point besides give me a hug and say that he wished he could stay. I wished that, too.

After he left, I was determined to keep the tears at bay, so I began delving into cardboard depths. And what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a plethora of books and a tiny reindeer!

Um...minus the reindeer.

But that, in brief, is The Story Of How I Conquered Today's Demons: As I've done so often in the past, I found my refuge in books. A total escape mechanism, but considering the circumstances, I'm okay with that right now. I have unpacked 13 boxes of books so far, and there are about 8 more to go. The rest of the afternoon should go fairly well.

What's comforting to me is that particular characteristic of books that has always comforted me: Books are entire worlds compacted neatly into something you can grasp, deal with, survey, and compartmentalize with ease. These convenient, well-organized universes are particularly appealing to me right now, since my own world is currently so disorganized, intangible, disoriented, and incomprehensible. If I can't quite get grip on my own universe right now, and least I can take these small, compact universes and put them in bookshelves, where I know they belong and will rest secure and unscattered. I look at them, tucked safely away on their shelves, and I feel much more at peace and relaxed than I did this morning. I have made sense of a tiny part of the chaos. Woman has triumphed! ;o)

Like I said, this is very much a psychological escape method (as well as a human construct), but I *know* that this is what it is, I recognize it for what it is, so I feel comfortable with allowing myself to indulge in this kind of retreat. I think that for now, it's what I need.

More later...since our apartment now has Internet access! Yay!

4 comments:

Alisha said...

Our books were the first thing to get unpacked -- along with the DVDs and CDs since they were packed together. It was so nice to see the books on their shelves. It makes everything seem a bit more in order.

April said...

Yay for your stuff arriving on time and not 4 months later!

Anonymous said...

Being a veteran packer (and un-packer) I can understand the soothing quality of books. Complete and apart from all the joys of book READING is the way that books are nice squares and rectangles that fit into boxes nicely, go on shelves easily, they have an obvious destination and place of residence and even satisfy that desire for categorizing and organizing--without much hassle! Yup, books are always my answer for "where do I start?" when dealing with (un)packing. Glad you found your friends :-)

thegermanygirl said...

Alisha: Ahhh, yes....great minds do, indeed, think alike. ;oD

April: Double and triple yay, really! Poor Clintsky...


Bri: I was glad of that, too. And I agree with you on all points! Those little universes are always the right answer for me. :o)