Safe Harbor

There comes a time in every nomad’s life, I suppose, when one’s physical and psychic resources have been taxed to the limit (probably the reason I’m doing so little writing on this blog lately). There’s really little choice at that point other than to just stay put in the last place one happened to land. Sometime around the beginning of this year, the thought of packing up all my stuff even one more time to dump it into a shitty storage locker or someone’s basement, started to become simply too fatiguing to contemplate. After all, by my count, I’ve done it eight or ten times in the last two years, even, for over a year, doing it simultaneously in Berlin and Madrid.

The trick, then, is to finally settle into a place, to find some way to overcome the old restlessness, that need for change that approaches unhealthy addiction. It’s occurred to me that I’ve effectively lived here in my little house, despite my continued running off to Berlin, for going on 15 months. The last temporary sublet lease I signed was the spring of 2009, and although I was in Berlin three times this past winter and the U.S. once, I limited myself to crashing with friends and helping out with their rent.

It’s been going fairly well here, as I’m contenting myself with prosaic things like successfully saving the cherry tree from avian assault and tending organic tomatoes and corn from seeds from back home. Upon demand, I perform my assigned role of stroking this wild cat of mine into a stuporous mass of purr. I’ve had a housemate for nearly two months, a Spanish man who (amazingly) likes to cook and has taken to spontaneously thrusting homemade fruit shakes into my hand, knows how to clean and puts up with my television moratorium.

I still complain, often vehemently, about this place, but that’s necessary, I think, when one’s adapting to a new country. It’s heightened here as I increasingly suspect I’ll eventually become a permanent resident. Even so, Berlin still calls to me, though her charm is tempered by my increasing comfort in Spain. I can’t resist the need for that dark side, that difference, and the addiction to change is, I think, something I can permit myself, when my surrender is short but sweet.