Keep Marching, Moving On
a not too long, rather earnest story about moving, starter friends and the stuff I've been carrying around for a decade or more, which is now a pile of ashes in Golden Gate Park

At the end of September, I left my apartment and packed all of my worldly belongings into storage. Some people really hate moving. I'm not really one of those people. I like the process of stacking up all the boxes, fitting them like a giant Tetris puzzle into the back of a truck. The part of the process that I really don't like is the part where you have to confront your past, and sort through all the accumulated junk of your life. That part is a real bore.

Actually, it's not that it's boring. Often I discover all sorts of amazing things that I made, or someone wonderful that I know made, or something amazing and wonderful that a complete stranger came up with, and that can be really exciting and inspiring. But mostly, it's box after pile after stack of things that I just couldn't muster the energy to deal with as they happened. My usual course of action with these piles/stacks/boxes is to avoid doing anything about them until I have a houseguest, a party or until I move- any of the three events spurs me to put the entire pile and/or stack into a box, seal it, date it and write something informative like "STUFF" on the side. Occasionally I'll get more creative and write something like "Glow in the dark, plastic toys from the dashboard of the Oldsmobile" but these boxes are more rare, because actually labeling them would mean I'd have to look through the 'stuff' that's in them first. And there's never time for that, right?

This move was different. I knew this move was coming, and in the couple of months where it suddenly became a very real event in the near future, I was spending anywhere from two to eight hours on the phone each day trying to disgorge every gruesome detail of my past life as some kind of fearsome warning. In two to eight hours a day, for two months I sorted through almost all of the boxes I've carried around for a decade labeled "Stuff". I sorted through all the letters I've ever received, including all the notes passed between desks from elementary school to college. I sorted through all the mix tapes and mementos and remnants of lovers. I sorted through all the thousands and thousands of drawings and paintings and etchings which I'd made, none of which were very good.

I come to understand that as a younger person, especially as a teenager, I was so desperate to figure out how I fit into society, that any tangible evidence of who I thought I was, or what I liked needed to be collected up, displayed. My car was covered in bumperstickers of bands I liked, political statements, shit I thought was funny. My home was plastered with artwork, posters, images. My bookshelves overflowed with books, zines, records, movies. How would people know what kind of person I was if they couldn't see for themselves from the evidence of my purchases, my collections?

I threw away a lot of it.
Things that could be useful to someone new, someone else, I set aside. I filled a room with the stacks of boxes of things to give away. I called up friends, gave away things they might want. Someone asked me if I was about to off myself.

I realized recently how many things I gave to thrift stores might have been better given to others I hadn't thought of at the time- a pair of shoes, platformed boots with buckles and rubber ribbing which Zerøgee would have loved, rubber ducks that a co-worker collects, a book my mother bought a few days after my move which I had on my shelf for years untouched.

All of the things of my past lives. Such a great number of things. I've been so many different people- none of whom I'm terribly proud of.

All of the people of my past lives. So very many people. I've loved a very great number of people- many of whom I'm not terribly proud of.


There's this bit in a story by the wonderful Miranda July where she goes on about starter friends:

Generally, people don't like each other very much. And that goes for friends too. Sometimes I lay in bed trying to decide which of my friends I really care about and I always come to the same conclusion: None of them. I thought these were just my starter friends and the real ones would come along later. But no.These are my real friends. They are people with jobs in their field of interest. My oldest friend, Marilyn, loves to sing and she is head of enrollment at a prestigious music school. It's a good job, but not as good as just opening your mouth and singing. La. I always thought I would be friends with a professional singer. A jazz singer. A best friend who is a jazz singer and a reckless but safe driver. That is more what I pictured for myself. I also imagined friends who adored me.These friends think I'm a drag. I fantasize about starting over and eliminating the thin film of dragginess that hangs over me. I think I have a handle on it now. There are three main things that make me a drag:

I never return phone calls.

I am falsely modest.

I have a disproportionate amount of guilt about these two things and it is unpleasant to be around.

It wouldn't be so hard to return calls and be more genuinely modest, but it's too late for these friends. They wouldn't be able to see that I'm not a drag any more. I need clean new people who associate me with fun.This is my number two problem: I am never satisfied with what I have. It goes hand in hand with my number one problem: rushing. Maybe they aren't so much hand in hand, as two hands of the same beast. Maybe they are my hands; I am the beast.

When I first encountered this story (I heard Miranda read it at Modern Times on Valencia about a year after I'd moved to San Francisco with a group of my new-city friends, my not-starter friends) I think I felt much more like a drag myself. I related. I also have a problem with rushing, not returning phone calls, false modesty, guilt and not being satisfied, but these things are not what I want to write about. What I want to write about is which part of my past I destroyed, which is the point of this proof.

When I moved to San Francisco, I came here in part because I hardly knew anyone here already. Five people, that's it- one of whom was my mother. I was running away from my starter friends. I wanted to have new stories to tell to new people who had never heard me tell a story before. I was so tired of the rehashing, repeating, remembering of all the dramatic, melodramatic, traumatic past.

I was tired of hearing about the domestic violence, the overdoses, the hospital visits, the rehab visits. I was tired of retelling what happened at the funeral, at that one party, at the wedding, in the maternity ward. I was bored with the relationships, the jealousies, the hurt feelings, the betrayals. And I was most of all, sick of hearing my own stories, coming out of my own mouth, and worse, coming out of the mouths of the others.

So I moved.
And then I moved again.
Then I moved here.

In the four years I've been here, everything has changed. In the four years since I moved here, I've become a healthier, happier, excited-to-be-here person. In the four years I've been here, I've removed layer after layer of that film of dragginess that used to hang over me. In the four years since I've been here, I've been purging. Three of the five people I knew in San Francisco when I arrived are no longer a part of my life. This is a boon both for them and for me. One of them was the king of my starter friends.

Of all the things I threw out, recycled or gave away, there were three items that just couldn't be dealt with in the normal way.

One was a friend many of you may already know- a papier mache sculpture my starter friend, Marsh, made in an art class in high school. Marsh spent an entire semester wrapping layer after layer of crumpled newspaper with masking tape, carefully sculpting Gollum's body. The head wouldn't stay up on it's own, so he used a wooden ruler to give strength to Gollum's neck. He painted him with tempra, and then glazed him with a cornstarch and white-glue mixture which gave Gollum a moist, skin-like texture. Years later, Marsh's parents were splitting up in a sudden and terrible divorce. Marsh came back from college to move all his things out of his family home, and didn't know quite what to do with himself or his things. He stayed with me, and a lot of his things became a part of my household. Gollum moved into the back seat of my car. It was fun driving up to drive-thru windows and having the cashier jump when they'd see him. Then Gollum got added to the growing collection of things in my living room. He moved with me around and about, but at the ripe old age of 13, Gollum was a little worse for wear. His sticky-moist skin had absorbed all the cigarette smoke, the dust and the dirt, and my collection of cats had eaten away at his ears and his nose. It was time to let the Gollum go.

The other items are a little harder to explain. A mix tape that I can't-won't-shouldn't listen to any more, which was clearly labeled "If you are not Alanna, stop tape now" making it useless to anyone else. The empty journal, filled with loose photos, letters and drawings of a time I'd really rather not think about at all anymore and neither would the other person in those photos. All of these messy things meant much too much to me to simply throw them away, but there was no way I ever wanted to experience the sinking feeling after discovering them at the bottom of a box labeled 'Stuff' ever again.

So, I got my best friend, my oldest friend, the friend who would know just how good and hard and excellent it would be to let go of this messy stuff and we, my mother and I, made a little bonfire. We found some excellent ceremonial firewood in the form of slats from a wine casket. We made warm mulled wine with lots of fruit and spices and we went to Biome Gardens under a nearly full moon.

Someone had collected up a huge bonfire in the main fire ring, way too much for what we were there to do, so we used the little BBQ pit that p00n smashed in the preparations for Doorhenge. The fire burned hot and bright, and made quick work of the bits of my past I was so ready to let go. We talked about the things and what they signified, how things are different now from how they were then. We drank our wine, and sang a little song, and did a little dance around the fire. We toasted the king of my starter friends, and wished him well, said goodbye, like at a wake. We toasted the crazy, unhinged person I used to be, and wished her well. And we toasted the future and all the jazz singers who are reckless but safe drivers that I now find myself surrounded by, who's company I am so grateful to keep. Then we spread out the ashes and poured out the last of the wine on the coals as a toast to that circle of trees and all the wonderful things that have come of that space, and I came home and got back on the phone to disgorge every gruesome detail of the last few hours since the last call as some kind of fearsome warning.