Moving.

It is at the heart of the world's oldest philosophical problem and my newest philosophical dilemma.

(You might object that the problem is not the world's oldest, since it dates to the 6th century b.c., but versions of this paradox have been found in the vedas, which vastly predate the Greek.)

In a nutshell, if you move, who is moved to and who is moved from? Motion implies change, and who exists at the end of the change? Am I going to be a person significantly determined by my new surroundings, such that I am no longer the person of the old surroundings? How can I adapt or plan for this?

You can't of course.

When you move, you leap into the darkness. All your reserves of strength, faith, insight are called upon, drained and discarded in succession, leaving you still days out from the big push and in a hole so deep there is no word for darkness there.

During the move each nerve in your body is successively named, attached to a memory, boiled, misplaced, and discarded. At the end of the move you have only the connective tissues of your body, the ruin of digestive processes impelling you to crises by the hour, and no nerves left, no adrenalin left, no strength to regain the strength required to hide from the ongoing demands, and the renewed demands that start before you even shut the door in your house for the first night's sleep there.

Its moving.

Sara and I discovered that, hidden beneath the familiar layers of selves which we had become so enamored and successful with, mutually, there are layers of other untouched selves, or touched but unfathomed selves, whose masks and tones and poses scared away the intimate confidence we had so earnestly acquired, for months and years prior to the move.

Death, divorce, loss of jobs, major surgery, car accidents. And moving. All rank up on the top of the stress tote board. All dredge up personae we do not need nor want to wear for far the most days of our numbered days on this planet.

The 21st century is moving beyond psychology and psychoanalysis, even as it questions the other great truisms of the 20th century: gravity, speed of light, Marx, the Pope, and McDonalds. We are emerging from a culture that rationalizes the ineffable in the form of scientific jargon, to a culture that allows the return of the chthonic and mythical in the midst of the everyday.

Nothing is more everyday than moving house. And nothing releases stranger monsters into the midst of daily innocence. More on this later. For now, I am almost done shaking, and almost have my eyesight and nerves and digestion returned to a viable, if not normal, level.

If you want to hear the whole story, take my advice. Don't move.