Brief notes on moving in

It’s overcast in Providence today on August 3rd 2020.

There’s a squirrel who just climbed down a tree near the table outside my apartment where I’m sitting with a coffee I made. I decided to let the kettle boil so I could hear how loud it got, but that coincided with when I was outside looking for the recycling so I also found out how easily it is to hear loud noises from down there if the windows are open.
Pretty easily.

I slept very well last night and woke up dreaming a strange but interesting dream. I was honestly just happy not to have had another restless night of sleep like the first one. I’ve heard that the first few nights you are sleeping in a new environment your brain actually stays partially awake, that is more partially awake than it usually would. Sort of like a universal “sleeping with one eye open” behavior like how pirates and marines in Vietnam must have done. I guess I’m grateful but so far the only thing my increased sense of alarm has notified me of is a very strange and obnoxious knocking sound directly above my bed.

I tried last night ferret it out but checking the many boxes outside my bedroom window, one I was sure must be making this rhythmic noise to no avail. I’m convinced it is not a human noise, as it happened randomly throughout the day and night without any pattern, and because it is extremely rhythmic. Still, perhaps it could be related to the water as it seems to start when I flush the toilet.

Moving has been incredibly smooth, really, and I think most of my processing sorts of thoughts have been like the “one eye open” idea in that I’m fixating on the subconscious aspects of the move, like noise, the lack of birds, the urbanization of the area, how I socialize with people, etc. I’m also obliged to think about these gateways in my life through the lens of past gateways, and more realistically, my over the shoulder assessment of these gateways. I can’t help but think about the serendipitous and symbolic moments in the other places I’ve lived and constantly characterize things in terms of how they related to old places I’ve lived.

I’ve always done this in some way, for instance whatever the nearest coffee shop is to where I’m living at the time is immediately the “Pete’s Coffee” of that home, as per the fact that my first apartment in Portland was two blocks from a Pete’s which I came to find very dear. I suppose in Boulder it didn’t really apply, but on Cap Hill it was Dazbog (which ended up only really being the site of an awkward breakup and a few other forbidding and flighty morning encounters) and then in Wash Park it was more the Wash Perk cafe, but that one was located so far across the lake that it hardly counted as a “Pete’s” and instead served more as a destination for a walk or bike ride. Lebanon certainly didn’t have a resemblant geography although I suppose I could shoehorn in Jake’s drive through but that hardly counts. Here in Providence there’s a bagel shop flanking me on both ends, neither of which I’ve been able to try yet, but seeing as the environment and seating at Pete’s was an integral part of its memory, I doubt these nearby shops will come to properly fill that role anytime soon.

I continue to think of things as if they were overhead slides, trying to find places where lines match up and emphasize them as if that will help me find a pattern to my life. I note the outlying places with curiosity, and choose them each as a feather in my cap for the green salad of new experiences that I’m eating. I start to realize that certain lines are sort of a boring scaffold that doesn’t really yield much insight in terms of global patterns and cycles in my personal life, but that are instead basically predictable circumstance. Maybe not.

Last night as I was walking south of my apartment in the dark, where the tree roots had so thoroughly thrashed the sidewalk and the street lights were (deliberately?) incandescent, I found myself walking up a very steep hill. Remembering that Providence is one of a dozen or so cities that, like Rome, are “built on Seven Hills”. I found myself wondering which hill I was climbing, and if the analogy persists, which of the seven roman hills this one might be akin to. If it bore any resemblance at all, I was inclined to suggest that one could examine the particular history and characteristics of the roman hill to get a highly romanticized --