a survey of clouds

The best thing about my new apartment is the windows. I can perch myself on the sill like a cat and watch the street, the train, the buildings, the clouds like a massive moving painting. I did this a lot over the weekend, when my apartment was a semi-organized mess of half-unpacked boxes, ​my shins were covered in bruises, and my back felt like I had been hanging on the monkey bars for 48 hours (or, more specifically, like I had been moving all my worldly possessions from one fourth-floor-walkup to another for 8 hours straight). 

​Moving is always a kind of reckoning, and this one was the first in a long time that hasn't felt like an interim step to something more permanent. I can finally unpack boxes that have been taped up for six months, some for a whole year. I can finally unfold myself in this new space, settle. 

Leading up to something big like this, I always dip into an ultra-focused, almost dissociative state. I feel nothing, my mind is always running one loop of next actions and another loop of "breathe, it will all get done." And then I get through it and it breaks like the end of a heat wave, with a big thunderstorm of emotion - clouds thick with electricity, waiting for a spark.

But this time, the thunderstorm came early. A week before I moved, the nameless weight of significance of this particular move whacked me in the face, and I broke. And the only thing I could do was make something. I didn't connect these things until after the whole thing was over, ​but I think some subconscious part of me saw what was happening, saw that this was another stage of a long grieving process, and decided the best way to proceed was to make a dress. So I measured, drew a pattern, cut out the fabric, stitched it together piece-by-piece, finished the seams. And the next day I put it on and packed the rest of my things. I had to work out the grief with my hands, to make something new with it, put it on, and move forward. And leave the raining to the clouds.