Moving Blues...

So, I am in the thick of moving. Packing more boxes and trying to make arrangements with moving vans - this has been my existence for the past couple of days. As counterproductive as it seems, I am easily distracted by the window. The view from my apartment, which for all intensive purposes is not anything extraordinary or spectacular, is capturing my attention. It captures my attention more than I would like. For I am moving and sitting at the window, staring out on the view is not productive. I know this. However, I feel as though I am saying goodbye to a friend and we have to spend time together before I depart.

I have sat at this window for two years, noting the changes of the seasons and the observing the skyline and the neighborhood below.

It is different than when Sheila and I first moved here. The old tree in the backyard is long dead and much of it came down in the storm last week. Where will the birds perch and sing their daily song now? Much of the skyline has been altered completely by the building of new condos. Our building, for a time, was the tallest around. Another neighbor building has fallen. Another new condo has sprouted up in its place. Our building now is a dwarf amongst giants. Will it be next?

The church service spoken exclusively in Spanish that drew hundreds of parishioners every Monday night held in our neighbor's backyard no longer meets. It is quiet now except for the shrill car alarms going off every time a vehicle passes or some neighborhood kid gets too close. They are angry now. They don't sit out on the stoop anymore laughing and saying hello to the people who pass, helping people with their groceries. Do they sense that they are slowly being edged out?

I used to pass an empty lot that used to store shipping containers, listening to the birds and seeing the morning glory vines blossom. I would watch the house sparrows throwing themselves down in the dust and rolling about, leaving little circles where their bodies were. It has been razed to the ground. Plywood sheeting has gone up along the fence to conceal their digging. For what? No one knows. Perhaps the foundations of another condo.

The view from the window is different now. I am different now. It is strange to leave a place that for a time has been so much about my everyday story. It is strange to not call a place home anymore.