My first year living in the big bad city I moved fully 6 times under circumstances that were by turns comical, inconvenient, illegal, and profitable. Since then my peripatetic ghost has shifted abode more than 20 times. In the year prior to this one we moved a further five times, again all within a hundred square miles or so. The longest I've lived in a building not owned by my parents was the 2 years we spent in a beautifully crooked nest off a sweet little back alley of Beacon Hill. The shortest was 8 days in a cockroach infested palace on fashionable Marlbourough Street in Boston's elegant Back Bay. We fled leaving the majority of our belongings heaped in a massive pire under the 20 foot molded ceiling of what was once a beautiful smoking room. (that we persisted to the eighth day speaks to the battle hardening experience of routinely being chased barefoot around the Astroturf living room of our Hangzhou apartment by gigantic communist cockroaches unctuously waving copies of Mao's little Red book... No. No, i make nothing up!)
This happens to a lot of people.
Which brings me to my point: the Anjan Principle. We have this friend, Anjan, a rare good guy. Tall, weathered, and into extreme geography like Death Valley, Mount McKinley, and anywhere about 5 miles offshore and a few hundred feet down. He has experienced the horror of the forced march and has brought forth into the world a Principle, the adherence to which is a balm and succor to the wounded wandering soul of the apartment dweller. to wit:
let it be that all of your belongings fit into your Saturn.
Now this pearl may not seem like much at first, but stop and consider. The rate limiting step in the migratory wheel of life is the act of packing all your crap on your metaphorical back and getting the hell out of Dodge. Birds do this with exceptional grace. Anjan does it by traveling with nothing larger than, say, 6' x 5' x 3.5' — the size of the largest interior space of a dark green 1998 Saturn sedan. Which thoughts beg a simple corollary to the first truth, call it Singbat's refinement:
let it be that you and all of your belongings fit into your Saturn at one go.
Feel the power of the unpossessive Principal. Listen to the call of the unconstrained highway. Give up your worldly thoughts and throw away the keys to your long term storage facility. Cast off your trappings of earthly sloth, greed and wasted bipedality. Reflect the beacon of his shining headlights. Free yourself from the bonds of your clutching captivity. Emulate the master cylinder. Seek the truth. Hit the accelerator!
Live the Anjan Principal!!!