When moving, you are not here and not there. You're pulling up stakes, but have yet to put down new ones. Part of you is future-focused: did I order trash service yet? What color drapes should we get? Is there good Mexican food in our new town? Part of you is consumed by present demands: I need to pack. I need to finish this project before I leave. I need to make sure to call Stephen and hang out before we take off. Yet a third part is caught by the past: remember my crappy first apartment in this town? Remember those months I worked at the bookstore? Remember how you hated this place when we first moved?

Moving pulls you in these three directions, unmooring you, putting you in transition, in flux, in flight.

I've moved a lot. In the five years in Charlottesville, I've lived in five houses/apartments. I moved here from Texas. I moved to Texas from South Carolina. I remember that move particularly well, because I did it on my own. I left my father's house in Conway and drove to Greenville. I spent the night with my friend (John) Harper. The next day I drove the two hours down I-85 to Atlanta, where I stayed with another good friend, Daniel. Then, I hopped back into my seafoam-green Chavy Blazer and headed West on I-20, stopping in Tuscalosa to eat lunch with another friend. I spent the night at the Comfort Inn on Canal in New Orleans. Alone and wary, I didn't enjoy the city much. I was back in my room before dark. The next day I was up almost at dawn, headed West on I-10, over the inummerable bridges that spanned the bayous of southern Louisiana. I arrived in College Station that afternoon. I remember thinking that, with all my stops, I had left a trail of friends across the country like breadcrumbs, just in case I needed to find my way back home.

This move is very different from that one. Sarah is with me. We've bought a house. I'm starting a great job. But some of those feelings -- of being stretched, pulled between future, present, and past -- have surfaced again. I'm living on those in-betweens, as John (then Cougar) Mellencamp sang. But it's okay.