Swirled into an Interdimensional Eddy with a Bathtub
Day 50 of The Never-ending Move
It’s Day 50 of our move and the bathtub is still sitting in the middle of the living room. Every few days Ilja and I come around to our new place, The Shell, and check if anything has changed, opening the door with anticipation each time, to find that it is all exactly how we left it.
We did our last load of laundry two weeks ago and then put the washing machine into storage. Meanwhile, we wear the same clothes on rotation, handwashing essentials when necessary, and as perplexing as it sometimes seems, go to The Shell to bring supplies back to the old place where we moved them from, when they are needed.
We canceled our internet at the old place a few weeks ago when we expected to ‘most definitely’ be finished with moving. And when it turned out that the transition was delayed, yet again, I did my computer work in the park, on a bench under a rosebush, using the hotspot on my phone.
Today, upon discovering that the bathroom tiles the handyman needs to complete the bathroom renovations are still delayed somewhere in between Munich and Berlin, and it will likely be another few days to a week (the running joke), I start to really pay attention to what the signs seem to be telling us, or me.
It seems that either the Shell is not yet ready to fully receive us, or the Hub is not yet ready to completely let us go. Or maybe the two are in cahoots with each other. Or perhaps the universe, or a hopefully benevolent trickster being, lifted a little finger and sent those bathroom tiles on a twirling journey elsewhere so that something unexpected and important is revealed in this disruption.
There is certainly trickster energy in this prolonged delay - something cosmically funny about Ilja and me buzzing frantically to organize the chaos of closing a community space in a short time, then being foiled again and again, now more times than I can count when we actually try to move our bodies and our lives to the new chapter.
What I read from this is that there is still something to process in the old chapter, something to pay attention to, to resolve, to honor, and to properly close. I’m sure this will reveal itself clearly as we spin again and again through this Groundhog Day.
Do you ever get the feeling that sometimes along the current of your path, somehow you get caught up in an eddy? An eddy is a circular current, like a micro-whirlpool in the middle of a flowing body of water. You can see the swirls forming and dissolving as you get close to them, and sometimes you get pulled in. Once you’re in an eddy, you are subject to its forces, which will do as they will with you. You’ll want to resist them, insisting on staying your course. I have found that the best way to deal with eddies is to not get caught in them in the first place. Once you are in the grip of one, the most energy-conserving thing to do is to relax and allow yourself to be spun around for as long as it will take. An eddy is not life-threatening, merely inconvenient, and can be exhausting, but only if you fight it. Getting caught in an eddy is at first frustrating, and then it is an exercise in letting go, and allowing yourself to experience something different that you wouldn’t have chosen for yourself.
Being in an eddy feels like being in a parallel dimension for a while, but one that is very close to your usual one, like looking through a pane of glass. You can see it happening right beside you, but you’re just a little bit off from it. It seems like it should be easy to get back on course, but for some confounding reason, you cannot.
It is the universe pulling you into an unexpected dance off to the side. You leave an eddy when conditions are right. Some combination of you seeing your way through the swirl and jumping out, or the eddy itself dissipating. This is also a skill, to know if there is something to do to exit the eddy, or only to wait. Some eddies last a few minutes. Some last for years. There are likely even longer ones.
It makes me think of watching houseflies bash themselves against windows over and over again when the door is open right next to them. There may be a reality that feels close and accessible, but for a reason that is beyond your ability to understand, you simply cannot get there. A greater being with more perspective would laugh and comment on how pitifully small and limited this housefly is. If it is a lucky fly, it might be gently escorted out. Or eventually, bash itself enough times that it finds its way to the open door.
So, as I see it now, we are in an eddy that is spinning us around a circular frame of the notions of home, stability, belongings, and what it means to be rooted. Within the picture of this frame, we are bouncing between apartments, asking ourselves what is really needed from day to day in the way of food, clothing, and working essentials.
Though most of our belongings are at the new place, our quality of life at the old place is great. We have everything we need. And if we need more, we can organize it.
If I take off the lens that keeps me attached to a firm deadline, I’m able to see the silliness and fun in this. Instead of a conventional move where everything happens on one day, and then the rest of the time is spent in concentrated unpacking mode, we get to enjoy the summer and autumn days and evenings riding our bikes between places, using only the most essential things, and living into a most gradually tapering experience of saying a long goodbye to one place while learning a slow greeting to another.
Another curious observation: having built a community on unstable, quicksand-like foundations for the last three years seems to have reconditioned me in the skills of tolerating instability and uncertainty. I am even able to do quite complex tasks within the constraints we live in and find myself mostly navigating well. It’s fun to see myself as a semi-traveler through the city, riding my trusty bike-steed through the flows of the day.
On today’s visit to The Shell, despite not being able to execute much, I decided to beautify the space by finally taking the plants out of their boxes and giving them homes, even for just a while until they may need to be moved again. Poor, heroic plants that have been living in boxes for nearly two months. We lost an orchid. A long-standing one that has been with me for nearly eight years. Its plump leaves completely fell out when I lifted it from the box. Perhaps there will be some regenerative power left in the roots, and it will make a comeback in the right conditions. Orchids have this reputation for being finicky to care for, but I have seen mine thrive with the lightest of care in the right conditions. Another lesson for ourselves. Find the conditions you need for your particular brand of exotic plant to thrive, and it will not need you to fret over it to blossom. It will just do it because that is what it is made to do. People also mostly need to find the right windowsill with the right light and temperature.
Though the bathtub is still here, and the boxes and suitcases and unmounted ceiling lamps will also be for a while, it is never too early to beautify. In fact, beauty is the island that will give grounding for everything else to happen around it.
Being here in The Shell for an extended time on my own today, I started to have little energetic conversations with the space. How does the wind pass through the windows when they are left open? How do the doors like to slam if they are not propped open during a breeze? How do the sounds of children, cars, and distant sirens find their way around the edges of neighboring buildings, up the walls, and through the portals to me? How does the light reflecting off the walls slowly wane in the setting evening hours?
It feels settling to be here, as I let my energy slowly ground downwards and into the space, feeling how my gaze flows around the room, imagining what object would like to live in which corner, over which doorway, on which windowsill. The Shell feels like it will be a blessedly quiet place to rest, recuperate, and receive.
I have the sense that all our flustering and pushing to get the apartment into shape to move into will have little to no effect. But, one day in the soonish future, things will suddenly happen, on their own schedule. Tiles will arrive whenever they exit their own eddy, the bathtub will migrate like salmon returning, back to its place of origin, and we will someday, somehow, wake up to find ourselves living here as if we had always been.
