The art of disassembling

In the midst of boxes and heavy black markers. Hands marked with packing wounds of cardboard scrapes and paper cuts.

Made a second Staples trip for boxes. Schlepped them home from Union Square with box-ends dragging. Mid-day stoop sitters paused to watch me pass. In this city of flux, the site of new boxes is a still an anomaly - New Yorkers move in, move up, discard and redo but it's unsettling to see one moving out.

So far (1/2 way in first day - 19 boxes packed, many small projects and piles started but no room finished), 2 things signal (my) impending absence.

Bare walls with the smudges framing where art once hung.

The insistently ugly light of bare bulbs everywhere. In a premature "preparatory" gesture this morning, I separated shades from lamps and now sit in their stripped-down glare.

Packing-up an apartment, by the way, is easier than feathering it. 2-1/2 years to arrive at the apartment that hosted last night's party; 6 and change to undo and remove myself. We're skipping back in time.

And running through my head is this poem (minus the last stanza, which is another loss and the real point of the poem - using blogger-license here).

One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something everyday. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these things will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
- Elizabeth Bishop

Full poem here.

C - losing faster