There's something about dismantling a home that is disturbing (as well as exhilerating) even when it's in service of a wonderful cause, even when it's not my home being dismantled. Taking apart C's home yesterday, from the bookcases to the cleaning supplies under the sink, from the storage closet off the living room area that contained canvaqs drop cloths and a motorcycle jacket that's headed for the Goodwill, and finally cleaning out the last of the stuff in the fridge and the freezer, leaving behind us a bare, empty vacuumed, gleaming space...it reminds me of impermanence.

When a home is set up, even a makeshift home in an artist's loft, it feels settled. Things in their right places feel as if they belong there, have always belonged there. Taking it all apart--hiring three young guys in baggy shorts to haul it downstairs and out the door and into a moving truck and drive it over here--feels like the death of something--and it is. The death of C's old home, where he lived and studied and made food and made music, and met me, and wined and dined and courted me, where he brushed his cat and talked on the phone, and lived.

Now he'll do all that living at my--at our--home. And it's good.

But I think that seeing how it all comes apart reminds me of how everything can all come apart, including our precious bodies, our relationships, our houses--everything that feels solid and permanent is in fact porous and malleable. And destructible. Even our lives.