Such an interesting phrase,”Moving Home”. You don’t really move your old home to a new place (unless you have a caravan or a home that can be physically relocated). Instead, you take the objects from the old home and reposition them in the new one.

I recently sold up and moved out of where I had lived for almost 15 years. Downsizing, many objects were donated to charity and I only brought those things with me that I believed might help me settle into my new space. The same objects pretty much had also traveled back from my apartment in New York, so this is their third relocation.

I went back to see the old place empty. Nothing there except floors, walls, ceilings, doors. Empty space with nothing to remind me that it had indeed been a home for myself and my daughter for many years. Faced with such blankness, I even found it difficult to conjure up memories.

Brian Dillon comments, in his book In The Dark Room: “What gets repressed as we prepare to go, is not the space itself, but how it felt to live there. The house is only ever what we make of it, and remake, from day to day…”

By fortunate chance, I picked up Sam Johnson-Sclee’s Living Rooms in a bookshop near my new space.

“The spaces we separate out for living in are valuable only when they appear to have always been vacant and waiting for their new inhabitant.” Johnson-Sclee

Johnson-Sclee also speaks about what we leave behind:

“But there is always a trace.”

“The things that remain are clues: dust, scratches, Blu Tack marks…”

Although I believed that I thoroughly cleaned the space I just left, I do wonder what trace of me—apart from memories—remain. I will never know.

I was lucky to have an overlap between leaving the old and moving to the new. The new apartment was empty initially and for a few days before I relocated, I spent time there in the evenings, bringing a cushion and a candle, sitting on the floor, considering the space. Feeling my way into it, in a sense. I liked those times, the easing from a place of mild terror (what have I done) to that of contentment (this will be ok). Undoubtedly, this reassurance was helped by the view of the city from the 6th floor apartment.

I love the cityness of this perspective—the scale of size and significance, me within the largesse of the metropolis and yet also on the periphery.

“…you arrive in the empty rooms, accompanied by nothing except a contract proving your right to be there. Standing with all your cardboard boxes around inside an empty shell…What to do? How do you find a way to affix yourself to this carapace and make it your home?” Johnson-Schlee

Now, my stuff has mostly been unpacked. I am surrounded by the familiar, apart from context and view.

“Fabrics, furniture, picture frames, plants, and textiles: what are all these things? The objects and designs of the interior are protective charms that fortify us from the world outside: they are the nesting materials that we use to hold ourselves in place inside the unwelcoming shell of a commodity.” Johnson-Schlee

And that’s exactly what in essence this new space is. A commodity. A necessity for shelter and safety and warmth.

I have never been a nester—unlike my daughter who is. To some extent, I wonder if the end of my marriage subconsciously killed of any innate “homemaker” instinct that I might have had. Then again, I don’t remember ever nurturing fantasies about what my dream home might look like. So maybe that gene just passed me by. I think my daughter would attest to my lack of nesting skills—she totally supported selling the place where we have lived for a decade and a half, somewhat surprising from someone more invested in memories and the tangible objects of such memories.

I often wonder about the point of most of my objects—utility and beauty/joy are probably the only attributes that I rate. But they are pretty much all ultimately and essentially props to our fantasies, no? “…the dream of a world beyond the conditions of everyday life.” Johnson-Schlee.

Take plants, which I started to accumulate recently: “Pot plants embody the will of life to exceed its container.” And sofas: “Sofas create a state of super-position between life and death.” Johnson-Schlee. Maybe that’s stretching it a little, but it’s intriguing to consider.

Johnson-Schlee makes a further interesting point: “After all, every object that we encounter is the product of someone else’s labour. Hidden inside our homes is a powerful truth: our lives depend on one another; we live because of the work of others.”

For years after leaving Ireland, when I said “going home” I meant returning to my homeland. I haven’t done this for some time—refer to Ireland as home—probably since my parents died and the family home was no longer that. I have many memories and can still walk from room to room in my mind. Unlike Brian Dillon, I never saw it empty but I did see it totally reconfigured—and unrecognisable to me—when my sister completed a pretty major transformation.

So here I am, looking out across the rooftops and cranes, feeling my way into and embracing this new space. I am grateful for it, for somewhere I can walk into (and out of) at will.

I seem to have a transient/nomadic take on life. Hence I have gone from home ownership to home rental.

Easier to walk away, perhaps, to move my objects elsewhere, should I one day choose to leave this borrowed space.