missed and found

Moving house entails playing many games simultaneously for an extended period.

There is of course the most obvious obstacle race, involving navigating various boxes and bags, in a house in a state of relaxed flux. How to get from point a to point b or to point b.1.2 without snagging one's clothes on a wayward hanger or tripping on a light bulb?

Then there is the more complicated jigsaw puzzle, where one has to ponder which part goes where, so many many many pieces of all sizes, weight and feel that could go into so many different spots and corners. But take note, when the puzzle is solved, the picture won't be the same!

Oblivious to the fact that it's a different forest altogether, our ate is expert at this game. On day one, she recreated our kitchen, complete to the placement of the pots from our former kitchen, to even the placement of my sorority sister's 2 x 2 id picture at the side of the ref! Yes, my poor unknowing sis, whose picture that I filched, no asked for, from her wallet, was posted at the side of our ref in our old apartment, simply because I did not often see it and did not remember to keep it amongst my photos of friends, is back at her place of glory, able to observe the washing of the dishes with her smiling eyes.

Then there is the game I seem to be more deeply involved in, a combination game of hide and seek, and lost and found. On day one, I practically had to spend an hour assembling stuff I needed to get out of the house and get a massage. Where was my shampoo? Towel? Undies? Top? Shorts? Sandals? Toothbrush? Comb? All right, maybe it took more than an hour :D.

As the days passed, I got better at this game, only spending more time hunting down needed documents on some mornings before I go to the office. Or maybe because I've chosen to simplify my life lately, going for the wash and wear (rugged chic? :p) look by wearing only the pairs of shoes and tee-shirts that I see, nevermind complicated outfits for now.

It hasn't all been delays and wearing down the staircase hunting down stuff though. I have also had occasion to find some surprises. A poem I wrote for an old lover that no longer makes me wistful, but glad for the existence of a poem. I've also come across the aircon man's precious number, after two weeks of bringing up its lost state to friends. (It was there all along but just didn't want to be found, in the tradition of a Mercury retrograde.)

And this morning, flipping thru notebooks for a school document, I found an old letter from the first lover, the one he wrote soon after it was truly over (yes HB, the one you and I bonded over, for the first time, more than a decade ago, hahaha!, when, you claim, you lost a hanky to me :D). I pounced on the letter delightedly, eager to show it to a girlfriend. However, rereading thru it brought tears to my eyes, on a morning when I'd already done some crying (it was that blasted book three of the Josephine Bonaparte trilogy, soooo heartbreaking). The thoughts and emotions described in the letter were real, it was like reading a novel of another time.

As I read thru the letter -back to back on a piece of bondpaper- I could almost recite precious parts from memory, so repeatedly must I have read it all those years ago.

The point? The game-playing continues. :D