I’ve moved twice this year. Once by choice, once by circumstance. In my most recent application, I was asked to list my last five years of residence. I thought about my tiny Hamilton Heights apartment, where I had to remove the closet door if I wanted full use of my dresser. Long nights trying to plan the next move of my matriculation. A life I can still see clearly. Time somehow makes memories more vivid. Or perhaps that’s my own fabrications.
There was the room I rented in Van Nuys when I needed to be in the marina every day. “It can’t be *that* far away.” There was the living room I slept in for a year in Culver. After that, two years in a little pink house on Hughes.
But the one I can see most vividly, the one that felt most like home, sits perched above the one story homes at the bottom of Mount Washington. The constant cooing of birds drowning out the neighbors playing basketball in their backyard. The smell of taco meat steaming from each block. The one I only called home for seven months. But home, nonetheless.
Unable to stay for long, I pack, and find myself yet again starting anew. New pizza shops on new corners on new commutes. New coffee spots with new nooks with quiet folk to keep me in my own version of solitude as company. New streets to walk when sleep refuses. I find myself still saying “It can’t be *that* far away”. What *that* is, I’m not quite sure. But what ever it is…it can’t be that far away…can it?