ESSAY
text by EMANUELE COCCIA
artwork by SARAH ANN WEBER
They were everywhere and had disfigured the living room into a maze of cardboard, tape, and angst. I’ve always hated boxes — their color extinguishes all desire. I was about to pick up the first one when I was paralyzed by a cluster of confused memories. How many times had I repeated that same gesture? I paused for a moment and tried to count and remember the moves I had already made. Thirty.
It was July, and I had been living in Paris for three years. I had just two days to “close up my house.” Forty-eight hours to buy 80 boxes, assemble them, lock up my life — clothes, dishes, books, photos, memories — rent a van, load it, and then unload it again, deposit everything in the new apartment, exhume my life in a place I barely knew….