Divestment

Last night, I stayed in the Holiday Inn down the street from my apartment. Mine was the kind of hotel room that I dreamed of when I was little:  a colorful little pod, it seemed to have sprung out of Tintin: Explorers on the Moon or some half-remembered Babar title.  The shower wall curved in wavy fish glass against the neat white queen bed, a minimal-but-comfy green sofa was tucked into the corner by the window, and a bright blue space-conserving Murphy desk completed the picture.  The whole effect was simple, clean, warm, and cozy: a nest.

(When I was little, I wanted nothing more but to live next to Plum Creek in one of those womb chairs -- you know, the ones by Kaddur -- in my mind, it would be lined with a few bookshelves on the inside, a reading lamp, and a clear door that would keep the wind out but let the view of the creek in.  As a seven year-old, things like kitchens and stoves and the laws of physics didn't occur to me.  All I needed were books, nature, and a nest.)

(Incidentally, omigod, I just looked up Kaddur chairs online and there's one on sale for $722!  I recognize that's an absurd amount to pay for a chair.  A stupid amount to pay for a chair.  I do not have a spare seven hundred dollars in my life.  WOMB CHAIR THOUGH.)

To the point:  why was I staying in a Holiday Inn last night, you ask?  I'll answer:  I am divesting myself from Beijing.  This will not be my last post about China -- not by a long shot -- but when I'm back in the city in a week, it will be as a tourist rather than a resident, and I know enough about myself to say that it'll feel pretty profoundly different:  freer, maybe, but also less rooted.

So, last night I was in a Holiday Inn.  Let's go back to the nights before, when my friend Amy was kind enough to let me stay at her apartment, conveniently located in my building.  The morning that the shippers came to my place, I sequestered Everything Not Being Shipped into my kitchen and watched as extremely kind and efficient men packed up my life.  It took four hours, and even though I did basically nothing except read the entire internet while I waited for them to finish, I was exhausted afterwards.  My apartment was bare but messy, and I took my things down to Amy's.

Over the next few days, I met with friends for the last time (in Beijing).  I had dinners and an epic brunch.  I went for a massage with Cat, and I took a beautiful five-hour nap on Amy's couch.

I also watched my apartment become cleaner and barer.  My ayi scrubbed the place from top to bottom and took my plates, pots, pans, and other ephemera off my hands.  I packed a few extra things that needed to come with me -- mouthwash, a changepurse, the red and green striped ribbon my dog Kodie wore around her neck when I first met her in 1990.  Light skimmed in through the curtains, shining on the hardwood floors, and I was very glad that I was staying at Amy's: I suddently missed my apartment -- my nest -- with a fierce, aching intensity.  It was the third wrench to my heart.

Farther back still: a week ago, I was trying and failing to pack things in my apartment in anticipation for the movers.  At one point, I was just shifting things around.  I woke up on Wednesday morning with my mother's voice in my head -- "put things in piles!" -- and thought hazily that I WILL MAKE THREE PILES, but I wasn't really sure what classification each pile would have.  Cat came over to supervise as I packed for Japan and the summer (fillling the Kyanne/mom-shaped hole in my life).  

I'd been bringing things to and from school for the past few weeks.  It's amazing what will end up in your office if you're not careful:  files, of course, but also DVDs, and books, and a dining room chair? And things had been going to school, also, to coworkers and friends:  air purifiers and a toaster oven and my bedside table and spices and cake mix.

My second big wrench was the last day of school, obviously.  I hugged students and coworkers and, predictably, lost it.  I felt the first twinges in the morning when I looked around my department office:  these people, I thought.  This place.  It's never going to happen again.  I carefully had only a beer at the Last Day BBQ in order to preserve my tenuous dignity, and yet soon I was a miserable lump of tears, claiming breezily to have allergies as the room devolved into a whirl of humans and cocktail food and hugs.  

And back and back, to the first big wrench, on my twelfth graders' last day of classes.  It was the first thing this year that felt like an ending.  I read them "Cargo," by Greg Kimura, and -- as usual -- meant every word.  I felt unbearably proud of them, as if I was exploding with sunshine.  And yet, my heart lurched -- I thought, no more discussions, no more heckling, no more check-ins, no more blindingly insightful comments that change the way I see the world.  

No more -- until the next time.  Until the next class, the next school, the next apartment, the next neighborhood.  And that's what makes divesting from a place worth it, in the end: it makes room for the next thing.  That said, I always must remember to divest slowly, step by step:  feel every wrench, notice every detail, love every moment.  Don't let it happen by accident.

Last night, as I walked down my street and past my old apartment building to the Holiday Inn, I saw:  bright lights in the darkness, illuminating vegetable carts, fruit carts, brilliant red cherries, watermelons, pineapple, grills prepared to serve the hungry passersby, antique carts loaded with brass candlesticks, buddhas, red Chinese boxes (I bought one, my first month in my apartment; it was my first apartment purchase not from Ikea), motorized rickshaws staffed by men eager for a fare, and all this interchangeable with the flimsy card tables set up on the side of the road, expats walking through like guests, like ghosts, alcohol and cigarettes and card games and everywhere the sound of Chinese, the noise of it: laughing, yelling, heckling, dancing.