My Suitcase

I really hate to keep writing about my stuff, but D is off having adventures and moving into our new apartment this weekend, while I am still here packing my . . . stuff. It’s hard not to obsess about it.

I’ve been agonizing for a week or more about this vintage suitcase. I love this suitcase, because it’s cool looking and I love cool looking old stuff. It looks great in my living room next to the wicker Pottery Barn trunk and the old hat box that was used to hold makeup during the run of Aces Wild.
 

But this suitcase is not just décor, it has a particular history.

When my sister went off to college, my parents presented her with a gorgeous four piece set of green leather luggage. I loved this luggage, I lusted for it. Especially the little rectangular cosmetic case, remember those? Linda went off to college with this luggage, and it followed her into her marriage, and when she died the year after she graduated and got married, it stayed with her husband. (Except for the cosmetic case, which somehow ended up back at our house, but which my mother threw away when she moved to L.A. Grrr.)

 

Linda in her '40's getup and her swell hat

A few years later, when I went to college, there was no money for luggage. There was an old suitcase of my dad’s held together with a giant belt and duct tape.

So I went out to the thrift shop and I found myself this suitcase, along with another one matching. These suitcases were so completely inappropriate for the purpose, they were heavy, they had no wheels, they weren’t that big. But they were cool looking and they were what I could get. And they were sort of an FU to my parents, who could afford fancy luggage for Linda, but not for me.

So yes, I actually packed and carried this old vintage suitcase and its mate to college and back again many times, and then to L.A. The other one wore out and fell apart at some point, but I kept this one and just sat it in my living room, looking cool. It made a cameo in Slingin’ the Slang, it was just the right style.

But now I am moving across the country and I can’t justify schlepping it with me any longer. I often think that the things I own are less important than the stories that go with them, and I can no longer justify keeping this thing just for the sake of the story. So I’ve taken pictures of it, I’ve said goodbye, and I’ve told its story. Anybody want it?

Distress Signals

My car is sending me distress signals from New Jersey. 

I have no idea how many weeks ago I actually wrote that last post. Despite all that agonizing, it has still taken me this much longer to post my news on Facebook. I’m 67 boxes into this massive undertaking. I have thrown out or shredded bushels of paper and I have a growing mountain of stuff in the spare bedroom being saved for some mythical garage sale I am planning on having when I am back in town in March. I have things on eBay. (Anybody want an elliptical trainer? Or an antique stereoscope?) 

 I hate STUFF.

I am thinking nostalgically of those days when I was working in NY and living in someone’s spare closet, with only a week’s worth of clothing that needed to be schlepped to the laundry every week, but still. All other possessions digital only. Monastic. I could do that.

We’re moving back east precisely because I’ve spent so much time sleeping on theatre board members’ couches and at the Pod Hotel. But yikes! This time I’m taking my whole house with me!

Working on the clothing now. D’s is mostly all packed, except for his ties. The man must own 65 ties and I’ve only ever seen him wear two. When he moved to LA from NY originally, he could not believe that he didn’t have to wear a tie to work. He carried one in his bag every day for the first week, just in case. But he loves them, so I will carefully fold them and lay them across my dresses, promiscuously commingling our clothing in the same box.

The packing is bringing out the worst of my OCD. I mean, everything has to be organized and packed logically and efficiently. The freakin’ CDs took hours and hours of my life, and who even listens to CDs anymore? D talked me into transferring them into binders and throwing out the jewel cases, which was a really great idea because: 30 lbs or so of plastic out of my life! (But recyclable? No idea.) But the liner notes. I felt so guilty about the liner notes. Don’t I owe it to all the musicians listed, the composers and special guests, the designers and artists? I tried sliding the liner notes into the slots in the binder pages along with the CDs. Worked great, until I had 200 or so CDs in a binder that was supposed to hold 400, and it wouldn’t close. In the end, I threw out the liner notes for all the pop and rock. (Gasp. It’s still hard.) But crikey, I hadn’t looked at any of it for a hundred years, and I don’t even get liner notes anymore because I download MP3s now, so really, WTF?

Except for the musicals, though. Hence, a giant binder of rock, pop, alt, punk, jazz, etc., and a large box of musicals, still in their jewel cases, liner notes intact. I can try to be noble, but musical theatre will make a fool out of me every time.

I’m going into the bedroom to fold ties now. 

Big Announcement

How does one navigate major life changes in this era of incessant sharing? When I make public my achievements, my political and religious beliefs, the constant cultural commentary that infuses my brain, and occasional photos of my food, how do I then share with you, friends, aquaintances, colleagues (and all three followers of this blog) the biggest change I have undertaken in my life since moving to Los Angeles?

I’m moving out of Los Angeles.

I’ve known for the last few weeks, but I’ve only been telling people quietly on a “need to know” basis. I felt that I needed to make some sort of announcement, but I also felt like it could be the most personal thing I’ve ever posted on facebook.

I’m moving to New York, or more accurately, New Jersey. Or more accurately, I’m becoming fully bicoastal, since my mom will stay in L.A. and I’ll be back once a month to visit her, plus take meetings (hopefully) and meet with graphics clients while I’m here.

So I’m not really moving, just packing up all of my possessions, loading them on a moving van, driving across country with a husband, dog and parrot, and renting out my house. (Anyone need a house? Two miles from the beach!)

The planning and the packing and the stress of it at first made everything into a kind of blur. It didn’t really hit me until I saw my car drive away on the cross-country transport, whereupon I burst into tears. (Yes, I shot video of my car leaving me for the east coast. It kind of reminds me of the credits sequence of Slingin’ the Slang, where Samantha dances off down the street, turns the corner and is gone. Stop it, I’m tearing up again.)

And the packing. The PACKING.

 If you follow me on fb, you may have seen some posts about my stuff, my STUFF. First it was the yearbooks -- I am in possession of seven belonging to my sister and six or eight belonging to my parents. Kind of cool to look at, but collectively weighing more than fifty pounds. Not coming with. I took photos of all the relevant pages I could find, asked the fb hivemind, and decided they will have to go to the recycle bin.

The STUFF is an emotional minefield, too. The yearbooks again, for example. All those photos of my teenaged big sister, carefree and DOMINATING all academic competition in high school. Also, all four of her college yearbooks, which I remember my brother-in-law leaving on my parents’ front porch one day, some months after Linda died of Hodgkins disease at the age of 22. I thought they were so precious at the time, but now I look at them, she barely makes an appearance -- just the standard headshot her senior year.

I may not be a millenial, but I am adopting the millenial attitude towards STUFF. If I can’t keep it on my phone or hard drive, I don’t want to own it any longer. I have shelves and shelves of books, but I’m going to attempt to get rid of all but the plays, the literature, and the few books aquired in L.A. that are absolutely necessary to my existence. (Of course, I haven’t gone through them yet, so I don’t yet know how many will be deemed “necessary.”) I am ALL FOR keeping my library on my iPad. (As a side note, I love reading on my iPad. Did you know you can download ebooks from the library? So if you’re lonely and bored at two in the morning, you can download a book to read ABSOLUTELY FREE. Instant gratification, gratis.) I have stacks of screenplays -- who wants ‘em? Likely more than half my boxes will be full of nothing but paper and words. (Don’t get me started on the office supplies -- I dumped three bags of recycling yesterday because: printed scripts, floppy disks, CDRs and all the accoutrement of making the ephemeral solid in the world -- OBSOLETE. Yippee!)

So that’s my big announcement. I haven’t posted on this blog, with its strangely prescient title, for years, but when D proposed the cross-country car trip, I only agreed if he would let me document the whole process. Watch this space for further adventures.