I Never Feel at Home in a New Place Until I Have These Three Things

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I spent the weekend hauling new bookshelves around my apartment, trying to find the one place where I can cram as many of them as possible without creating a choke-point inside my new place. Bit by bit, the “other apartment” is becoming home, and the place I share with friends in Dorchester is becoming “the old place”. It’s bittersweet: Later next month I will, for the first time in almost ten years, not have a home in Boston or Cambridge. I won’t be able to describe my place relative to a Red Line stop (“It’s no trouble to get to, the train usually only catches fire further up the line!”).

There are three milestone rituals I have when I move into a new place, and until I’ve performed these rites I still feel like I’m trapped in some kind of liminal limbo. First and perhaps most important is setting up the desktop PC. The desktop was my lifeline to normality going all the way back to my first year in college, and until I’ve successfully powered-on and connected to the internet, I haven’t really settled anywhere.

The weirdest ritual I have (and it is a ritual) is setting up a surround-sound speaker system and then, immediately, testing it with a copy of Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans. I don’t know why I am fixated on ensuring that I can always retreat within a cocoon of cinema-quality surround sound, but it’s a top priority everywhere I go. And I won’t know if I’ve set things up correctly until it sounds like Marquis Montcalm and his native allies are bringing Fort William Henry down around my God damned ears. My partner can no longer abide this movie, by the way, because she has heard the same two or three scenes blasting at full volume, on repeat, late into the night at every place we’ve ever shared while I scuttle around adjusting speaker placements.

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The final piece of the puzzle is finding a place for my three-volume hardcover edition of The Complete Calvin & Hobbes. It’s an odd thing because I barely ever take them out and read them: I still use the old trade paperbacks for that, because they were what I grew up on and I think they feel lighthearted and playful in a way that’s more fitting for Calvin & Hobbes than the heavy, sober hardcover collections. And yet I still need to know that I’ve found a home for that massive set of books, heavy enough shatter my foot like a champagne flute if I were to drop them. There’s a comforting permanence to them that lets me know that Calvin and his tiger are safe here with me, I’m not going to lose them, and they’re right there if I need them.

What about you? What are the things you cannot feel at home without? What weird rituals do you perform in order to make sure you’ve properly feathered your nest?

Let me know in today’s open thread!