It’s over, we’re com­pletely moved out of Henry Street. Good-bye, farewell, see ya later. I don’t ever want to do that again. Seri­ously. Oh my god, I can’t really tell you enough how much I hated that whole expe­ri­ence. Not only the box­ing and schlep­ping across town in I don’t know how many trips, but the amount of junk that I have accu­mu­lated over the years and to which I have ascribed some sort of emo­tional value. It’s junk. Books, CDs, papers beyond belief, I don’t get it. I am mov­ing into a new phase of my life that is non-accumulative. I’m not buy­ing things I don’t need. I’m not col­lect­ing junk for the sake of any­thing. For my sake and san­ity, I will strive to be a min­i­mal­ist. Not only will it help my liv­ing space, it will help my bank balance!

And the books! Did I men­tion that I have more books than I know what to do with? Granted it’s not a library, but it’s so many. So many that I don’t know what to do with them. So many that I want to buy a Kin­dle just so I don’t have to keep them around. I don’t read as often as I used to, so it’s a won­der why I buy books at all. And that Kin­dle thing, as much as it’s still an abom­i­na­tion in my mind, is a pretty good idea for those of us who want to remain lit­er­ate but who don’t have space for it. I have to find a place for all these books. Like, some­where out of my apart­ment. Far, far away.

One of the strangest parts of the new apart­ment is my neigh­bors, as in, I don’t know them, I don’t see them, I don’t even really hear them, except when they open and close their doors. Our build­ing is three build­ings, three floors, six units in each, 18 total, do the math, all con­nected with lit­tle alleys between them, so from up above, the build­ing itself looks like an “M,” a “W,” or an “E,” depend­ing on your point of view. Our kitchen has win­dows that face onto that alley and look directly into the kitchen of the apart­ment next door. It was weird to wake up the first morn­ing, go into get break­fast and see some­one stand­ing there. I got a lit­tle self-conscious of my hair and my attire all of a sud­den. But then I real­ized that they weren’t look­ing over at us, even though I was look­ing over at them. I quickly averted my gaze and agreed to ignore them.

It’s weird. I feel like I’m break­ing the fourth wall when I do look over, and I can’t help being a lit­tle nosy. Plus, they have cats, and the cats see us and stare at us like we’re lit­tle laser points on the wall. And that freaks me out because I can see this black mass out of the cor­ner of my eye that is watch­ing me, and I don’t want to look because it’s not polite, and is this what city liv­ing is really like? Weird. Really weird. I don’t know them, and I almost don’t want to know them because it would totally ruin it for me. If we met on the street, would I have to be rude and not acknowl­edge them? Does the fourth wall extend out of the apart­ment and into the street? And since the win­dows don’t cur­rently have blinds or cur­tains, if we put up blinds or cur­tains, would it seem rude con­sid­er­ing the unspo­ken agree­ment of non-involvement? I just don’t know enough city eti­quette to know what the right answer is. I lived in flats for so long, and they were all so closed off from the neigh­bors, I don’t know. They were like lit­tle houses. I didn’t have to worry about stuff like this.

What­ever. Happy Mon­day. Happy February.