I
sat on the floor with my hands in my lap. I had four suitcases total. Two for
clothes, one for shoes and one for decorations, like my photos and books and
those kinds of things. I sat there and stared back and forth from my piles of
stuff to the suitcases to my piles of stuff and back to the suitcases. I did
this for probably about fifteen minutes. There was no way it was all going to
fit, but how do I decide what to bring and what to leave? Maybe if I stared at
it for long enough, it would all just magically fit.
I
have a pretty good collection of books and DVDs. There are the classics like On
The Road and The Breakfast Club, nonfictions like Into The Wild and Anthony
Bourdain’s Medium Raw, and then there’s the bestsellers like The Help and Crazy
Stupid Love. I also have that collection of magazines. A giant stack of
European Vogues and other random magazines like Wonderland and a National
Geographic featuring the fifty best NG photos of all time. I have tons of
kitchen stuff too, like a clock shaped like a chef and a pot made solely for
making hot chocolate and probably about ten different mugs and twenty different
shot glasses (my favorite is the crooked one that says ‘Tipsy in Indiana’ that
I bought at a gas station when I was passing through). I have a porcelain
elephant, a couple of small African masks I found at a street fair, and a large
poster of a monkey getting drunk. I also have a Jimi Hendrix record, but no
turntable. How could I leave any of that behind?!
Yes,
I do have a lot of random ass shit. Very few of it makes sense when put
together in one place, but I love it all.
Now I realize that moving across the country may not be as easy as I
thought it might be. I don’t even have an apartment yet, let alone a job, and
I’m leaving tomorrow, but I’m sure everything will work out. Must stay
positive!
I
left the shoes for last. This would also be very hard, as I had picked out more
than twenty pairs from my closet that I wanted to take. Four pairs of boots,
four pairs of ballet flats, a couple pairs of Sperry’s, umpteen high heels, a
pair of kitten heels, a few pairs of sandals, and so on and so forth. The same
notion came over me as I sat on the floor looking from shoes to suitcase. Maybe
if I stared at them long enough, they would all magically fit. I started with a
couple pairs of tennis shoes, then some heels, then the flats and sandals. In
total, I am bringing fifteen pairs of shoes to New York. I’m not even sure how
that worked out. Possibly it was all the squishing and shoving until not even a
baby shoe could fit in there.
As
we arrived at the San Francisco airport the next day, my mother and I that is,
I noticed a few odd looks from passersby as the driver unloaded one large
suitcase after another after another. They probably also noticed that I was
wearing boots, a jacket and a hat as well as carrying a wool coat and a large
stuffed purse even though it had to be almost seventy degrees out. With six
bags in tow, four of which were mine, we looked like a couple of gypsies
walking up to the United check-in desk. And, as you can probably guess, we were
those people at security. The ones who
have too much stuff and take forever and end up having to have their bags
checked for possible weapons. The weapon turned out to be a candle. Watch out!
It’s a weapon of mass nasal sensation!
We
arrived in New York and took a car to our hotel, The Warwick, where we finally
got to unload and change out of the clothes we had been travelling in all day
before going to dinner at a hip New York restaurant, Tao. We sipped on cosmos,
got rather inappropriately hit on by a man who invited us to sit with him and
his friends (I mean come on, I’m with my mother!) and ate some of the most
delicious coconut shrimp tempura and orange chicken I have ever tasted. So far,
New York was off with a good start.
Next,
apartment hunting!
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