Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

The last time I moved house was three years ago, but it was a pretty straightforward A to B move. This time around the logistics kept me awake – even after all these years of meditation, I woke in the middle of the night on Friday and my brain was immediately trying to solve the puzzles of when and how. We were borrowing a minivan for the weekend, and I had the movers scheduled for Monday, but having been away the week before, I didn’t feel sufficiently prepared, didn’t quite have enough boxes for everything, and was trying to make sense of what order to do things in. 

Having slept so poorly, in what turned out to be my last night in my old place, I wasn’t sure what I would feel able to do, but on Saturday I crossed the Bay, we picked up the van, did a load from Ruth’s place in Emeryville to the new place on Telegraph Hill, then over to mine to pick up my old bed which was surplus to requirements, and drive it to San Leandro to drop it off at Habitat for Humanity. I thought that was all I would be able to manage, but I was feeling good enough to add in another trip, up to Concord to get some of Ruth’s things that had been stored over there. After that we were tired, but with a good sense of accomplishment.

On Sunday we wrestled Ruth’s bed on top of the other things, ran over to the city again, then did another sweep of mine, before heading back over the bridge to drop off the van and bring Georgie the dog to the new place, which she had briefly got to sniff around on Friday.

And – just to add to the logistics – we had chosen the weekend of the North Beach festival to do this, which meant several of the already limited ways to get to the house were closed to traffic. Once we had parked at the end of all this, though, it was fun to walk through the tail end of the festival on the way to Trader Joe’s to pick up something to eat. We had forgotten to bring the plates we had wrapped up at mine, so we shared dinner out of the fruit bowl, and toasted our success out of espresso cups.

The weather had been gorgeous – not that we had had much chance to appreciate it – and the late stroll with the dog showed us a beautiful twilight, glimpses of both bridges, as well as our nearest landmark, the Coit Tower, and the heights of downtown from the top of Montgomery Street, before sleeping at the new place for the first time.

I rode back to mine first thing on Monday to get things ready for the movers, taking the legs of the kitchen table and the couch, and moving the piles of rubbish to the bathroom, and then let the crew do the rest of the heavy lifting. Once they had dropped everything off, I started putting a few things in order, so that by the end of the day we had the couch and the kitchen table set up, enough for a semblance of reality, and I had some clean clothes to wear for the week, though I regret that I didn’t have the energy to ride to Rainbow to get more food in.

Now we have to unpack all the books and clothes and other things and get our routines going. Because the one thing that was easily overlooked in the planning was that I was going to be co-habiting again. Going by the ease with which we managed to navigate the stresses of moving (not to mention the similar sense of ease while we were traveling), I think we are going to do fine. And now I have to plan my talk for the weekend (I will be talking about this, for sure), and what to say during the retreat at Green Gulch next week.