Call Me Ishmael

I am tearing apart the room here after less than a year, and moving on to a more feminine and adult abode less than a block away. I have grown to love the neighborhood that I was so reluctant to join at this time last year. Maybe I enjoy it because, like the rest of my life, it occupies a liminal space. Here is the paradoxical territory between high class and subculture, equally populated with the rooted and the rootless.
I am beginning to wonder which I am. I value my independence more highly than most, but (again, in keeping with the grand paradox of life thus far) the need for personal liberty is often complicated by an opposing desire for stability and the depth in friendship that generally is only achieved through consistent company. Herman Melville says that "All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore." I have spent too much of my life thinking earnestly at the expense of living earnestly, with that wanderer's fear of finding myself tied to one place, one set of people. I hope that I can keep the best elements of my rootlessness while discarding those that prevent me from living deeply in one place at a time.
I wonder what insights Ireland will add to this train of thought over the next month. At this point, I still have no idea which continent the rest of my life will find roots in— a thought that is both thrilling and somehow melancholy. I am never sure if I am running towards or away. I think possibly the solution is to live on a houseboat. Temporary permanence!

Excessive house cleaning always either makes me restless or content. This time it was both, I think. Typical.