Moving, part XVIII
By Matt Worley

Warning: This is a non-political column. Merely a bit of self-indulgence to make myself feel a little bit better. More ego stroking than the ego exploding hyper-reality of politics. So this may get a little deep. I just thought I'd warn you. Carry on.

Moving has never been new to me. I moved out of my mom after about 8 1/2 months, and a year after that the whole family moved from Maryland to Kansas. I don't remember much about the time in Maryland, and all the pictures I've seen of that time are of me in the arms of a nice black couple (big afros). I thought I was adopted until my parents assured me the people in the pictures were just my baby-sitters‹that and my irrepressibly straight hair. After arriving in Kansas, my family began to average a move every three years. By the time I was thirteen, we were living in a place called Clovis, New Mexico, and my dad was talking about moving once again. I voted against the measure because I was tired of it. I was beginning to value my friends as commodities rather than reasons to visit places I once lived.

College changed screwed it all up for me. After living in the same place for seven years, I moved back to Kansas. Four months later I moved to Missouri for about a week and then back to New Mexico. Hey, I was seventeen, confused and had severe delusions of grandeur. A year later I moved to cosmopolitan New Mexico (Albuquerque) to attend my third (and final) college institution. Finally settling on a place of study, however, did not change my moving habits. There were two semesters in two different dorm rooms, separated by a summer back home. A few friends and I moved into a house and were promptly thrown out six months later. After another summer at home (forced because of the eviction), I moved into a different house with different friends. My younger brother and I were thrown out in a violent coup d'état a year later. Nine months in a stifling apartment was followed by two years in the same house with a revolving door of about six different roommates. We (my younger brother and I) left that house of our own volition to move to Florida. Which is where I am now.

Almost three months to they day of arriving here, my younger brother and I are preparing to move yet again. We weren't thrown out, but we are not exactly leaving under happy circumstances. While reasons for the move would take too long to explain, trust me when I say this is almost a desperate attempt to claim our lives once again.

Throughout my life I never fancied myself a gypsy. There were many other romantic notions that roamed my brain, but wanderlust was not one of them. It just so happens that moving is something I am inclined to doing. Like Steven King is inclined to writing at the speed of sound, and Luke Skywalker was inclined to the Jedi way of life.

Sometimes a move is inspiring. One move centered my brain and started me down the twisted road of life I'm leading. Another ended up breaking my heart. One caused the creation of five novels (unpublished), and another gave me writer's block. Moving is never easy. As a very paranoid person, I always believe something bad will happen. After being evicted twice (neither time was my fault), I tend to be wary of landlords until the keys are in my hand. I think all of my mail will not be forwarded properly (this has happened twice now). I believe none of my friends will be able to find me. I also believe that somewhere on the trip between point A and point B, I will die in a fiery car crash. I also have the strange belief that everything happens for a reason‹some call me a nihilistic idealist.

Even with all of these neurotic thoughts rumbling through my head, I always pull it together and move. Some bad things happen, many good things smooth it all over. It's a trade off, like Karma. Abandoning the spirits of one place for another. As I type this, barely three days before pushing everything I think is important materially into my car and a moving truck, I wonder what I'm giving up. The relationships I've had with residents of this area have been like no others I've had before. I've had the ocean for a swimming pool, and a computer screen for a stage. I've been lied to, screwed over and drenched with torrential rain. I've questioned every decision I ever made in my life and come to understand very little of the big picture. I've also run out of money and patience.

I won't miss this place. I won't look back when I leave. If there is a lesson here, it is to accept change. That's all moving really is. A change. Not so sound overly political (I said I wouldn't), but change is good. I'm betting that it is better than stability. As you read this, I should be at my destination. And maybe in the coming weeks you will notice a change in the tone of our weekly one-sided conversations. Maybe I will have a better story to tell, or a better moral to discuss. I might even start making sense in the weeks to come, moved by the winds of change to become less obsessive and paranoid and more open to the notion of a sustained narrative. Then again, maybe I won't.

Matt Worley has moved to a city where Judy Blume once lived. No, not New York. And he didn't die in a big ball of fire. Not yet, anyway.

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