Necessity is the mother of reinvention

I am sitting in my half-empty apartment. The movers came today to take my stuff away. They came 3 hours early, which meant I had to cancel a meeting with my thesis advisor to have him sign it so I could submit it. They took what felt like forever but which was actually just a couple of hours, which, given how long it would have taken me to do myself, was basically instantaneous. When they were gone, I went to meet with the advisor, finally, and although he confessed he had not read it due to technological problems, he said he was confident my work was deserving and signed anyway. From his office, I went to another office to get a form signed, then went to the library to submit my thesis, pay the binding fee, and get the form signed by a different person. Then I took the pink copy of this form back to guy number 2, and then I was officially done with my thesis. Despite the scavenger hunt, it was rather anticlimactic. Anticlimax was somewhat countered by celebratory lemon ice, followed by cleaning. The majority of my Boston friends are either on their way to or already in Vermont this evening. I would have liked to have gone with them, but alas it was not to be. I'm sure they'll have a great time, and they might even miss me a little, but all that leaves me here in my echoing room. As I contemplate losing myself in Assassin's Creed 2 to stave off both the echoes and the silence, it seems as good a time as any to redesign my blog. After all, am I not about to reinvent myself in a way? Blogger made a pretty slick new tool for designing, and it's fun! If only self-reinvention came with templates.

Where?

I have been thinking a lot recently about place. Specifically, if I have one. If so, where is it? If not, how do I find one? Is it something I even need to have? In Cleveland, there is an empty house that was once "home" with all the messy, sentimental glory the term suggests. That glory faded not quite 4 years ago. In Cleveland there is also a house that has become a home again, but not "home." It isn't mine, and I've lived away from it too long to claim it as my own. In Oberlin, I had "home" but had to leave to have "life." Pity when those two can't coexist. In Boston, I have had apartments, dwellings. Boston was never home. Now I am leaving here for somewhere new. What I did not realize when I left for college, or when I left for grad school, is that moving to new places is made significantly easier by knowing that what you're leaving behind is solid. You know, viscerally, that when they say "you can't go back home" they're absolutely right. But you can still visit, and that's as it should be. We grow up, we move away, we come home to visit, and return to our lives. But what happens when "home" is a moving target? My father is being interviewed for a position at Dartmouth. I hope he gets it for a lot of reasons. But the prospect of not having a place to stay in Cleveland is unexpectedly disturbing. Can a city feel like home when you have to sleep on a friend's couch when you go there?