An Empty Room

Today is moving day, and I'm taking a break with some food and some blog. Whenever I move (which is many, many times in the past few years) I always leave it all for one day and then, on that day, I enter "moving mode". Basically, what that means is I move (in both senses of the word) nonstop from morning to evening, getting into a zone where all else but the task at hand disappears from my head. It is hard, when I am in moving mode, to even get myself to stop and eat. But finally, at about 3 pm, I hit a stopping point and have let myself sit down for a minute.

I was going to post a picture of my empty apartment, but now I realize that I just don't have the heart (and also, I'm not sure where I packed my camera). This was not, by any means, the best place I've ever lived--real small, hard to keep clean, not too much light, not too much of a kitchen, and very good at letting in the texas-sized insects. Yet a lot has happened in this little room; and probably the most notable thing was how I made the most of the place despite change, stress, heartbreak, and loneliness. I remember the mixed feelings of coming back to this place from a month away for Christmas and calling it home; staying in this one room studio for two days straight during the January ice storm and gathering my thoughts and strength around me to prepare for my second semester. I remember when I first moved in, hours after I had arrived in Austin, realized my plan A was not going to work out, found the post online, and signed a lease. I remember how foreign and big and lonely this town felt. I remember "moving mode"--focusing all my energy on cleaning this place and making it mine despite all of the uncertainty of the future. And I remember a few sleepless nights and midnight walks around the neighborhood in the meantime.

I may have lived in happier places, brighter places, and bigger places; but these four walls will hold remnants of some of the most significant moments of my life. I made and was part of some beauty here, despite all of the obstacles. And one evening, in particular, on my cheap black futon with a guitar in my hands, I wrote this song:

These old shoes
Turned up at the toes
Have lived in four states
And traipsed through countless snows
And something I can't measure
Has shown them where to go
To get to here

This one-room
Apartment where I live
It's walls already saturated
It's air already thick
With sleepless nights and wonder
And all the grace you give
To get to here

This hard head
This stubborn rigid mind
Has walked through burning coals
And made it out alive
And after such a journey
It still ain't satisfied
To get to here

This blue book
It's binding now in shreds
It's older than these shoes
This room, This stubborn head
And it's waiting to remember
Every little last thing you said
To get me here

This small song
Is asking once again
Why always so hard
To be just where I am
Why such a huge treasure
That won't fit in my hands

These few words
I give up every night
That sleep won't come
And my body tells me, fight:
It's nothing that I've done
That has saved my wandering life
And got me here