The shifting center
Perspectives on moving from a 4th houser
I enter a new dwelling and say my hellos, still raw from the goodbyes done prior. This is not the kitchen sink I recognize. These trees don’t know me yet. But I have no desire to go back, even if that were possible. The moment I move out of a place, imagining myself living there again is like trying to shove my feet back into a pair of shoes that no longer fit. Or trying to climb back into the womb.
I enter a new home and wonder what stories will unfold here. Gravity feels different for the first few weeks as I adjust to the shifting of my center. Which memories, fond and frightening alike, will these walls hold? Do they wonder where their precious inhabitants have gone? At the same time, I sense the chapter closing on the old place, now carrying with me the knowledge of what was held there. Former dwellings become marked, in that way: that was where I fell in love. That was where we brought our baby home and survived the newborn phase. That was where I started a business. That was where I lost months to the fog of dissociation. That was where I failed and failed and failed.
Ghosts come from the past. We dig them up based on where they once existed in the present. There are ghosts you leave behind when you move out of a place: the former versions of yourself who could have only existed in that time, in that place. Sometimes I’m driving around my city and I come across many of my own ghosts. They are encapsulated by their own routines and roles and rituals and remain consumed by their realities. I drive by them: the apartment building where I healed from a breakup and had fantastic sex and watched the solar eclipse from the balcony. The stretch of road I only ever experienced from a bus seat, feeling desolate and desperate when I had no car and no job. The restaurant I always chose for dates with prospective sugar daddies because it has this one dessert that is orgasmic. The particular 7-11 where the employees saw me at all hours, in various states of intoxication, and often in drag. The very first place I ever lived when I moved to Portland, and the park across the street where once I took the most transcendent nighttime walk after a huge snowstorm had come through.
It’s not about the place so much as it is about the person I was when that place was part of my daily reality. It’s about me, in the now, smoking a joint at the same bus stop where as a 22-year-old I used to get up at 5 am and smoke joints and hustle to a job I hated, but now I’m 31 and I’m taking the bus to a friend’s birthday party while my husband & child are at home. It feels like filling in the blanks. I turn to my former selves when I run into them around town, and I cup my hand to their ear and excitedly whisper to them the answers to their questions about the future. Sometimes it’s not excitement but sorrow that leads me as I have to tell them they won’t get what they want or are working for. Sometimes I keep certain things to myself, because the knowledge would be too devastating for them to handle. I understand now why parents lie to their children about reality sometimes.
There’s a particular version of myself I never expected to run into again, who haunts my new neighborhood. I cannot tell her the entire truth. I saw her this morning, as I took a familiar shortcut through the suburbs to get coffee. She’s walking on the sidewalk, headed toward a house where dreams of hers were planted—dreams that were later dashed. I can’t tell her about that, because I need her to keep believing that the life she wants is possible. I need her to keep reaching for that, because even though she doesn’t get what she wants in the end, she gets me here. I brush by her as a neighbor now, and I lack the language to let her know that life ends up exactly how it should—but not how she plans.
Having a domiciled Saturn ruling my 4th house, there are few things I appreciate more deeply than the opportunity to have so many ghosts in the same place. It means I’ve spent time with this land. I’ve aged here, I’ve lost here. I’ve grieved here. I’ve developed oddly intimate relationships with street corners. I’ve been here long enough to notice what’s changed, and what never changes. I’ve laid down foundations here, whether I was intending to or not. I’ve earned all of these ghosts. The reason I can move through space and time in such a layered way is because I remained. I stayed with the land. If there’s one thing Saturn’s got, it’s staying power.
And yet, every time I have to move from one dwelling to another on this land, I get dizzy. The shifting center of gravity gets to me. There’s no escaping the delineation between who you were in one home and who you’re about to become in another. In that way, perhaps we should be treating moving like a birthday, of sorts. A rebirthday.
Life begins again.
Thanks for reading!
If you haven’t already noticed, things are changing around here. This publication is now called House of Origin, and it’s all things 4th house. Stay tuned for more—including a fun new series featuring some of your faves.