Out with the old – this is the house I am soon to leave, in Nodeland.  I am sure there will be pictures of the new if I move in there, hopefully later this year.

In a few weeks, I will have left this house forever.  Hopefully to go live in another, but even then there is a certain melancholy in leavetaking.  I have had almost four good years here, even though the lawns seemed nearly endless some summer days with the lawnmower.  It was my first house to live in all alone, and I enjoyed it immensely.  That is why I had a hard time convincing myself to creep back into a basement. Not that there is anything wrong with basements. But the peace and quiet of an empty house is something else again.

Truth be told, however, I did not really live in the whole house.  And I am not just talking about the basement, which was kept by the landlord except for the washing room. Or the attic, which was also off limit. Or the third bedroom likewise.  But the truth is that I mostly lived in the large bedroom that I made into my home office.  Oh, I did spend some time in the living room, but not much apart from when I used the stationary bike which stands there.  Most of the time I spent in front of my computers, as usual.

Actually this was not much different from where I lived before, the original Chaos Node where I lived for more than 20 years in a fairly large, modern basement apartment.  Most of the space was taken up by one large room, and when I had cleared it out to move away I noticed how huge it really was.  This was both my living room, my home office (on the west wall) and my kitchen (on the north wall).  There was a separate bedroom and a bathroom with space for washing machine, and a couple dark and cool storage rooms north of the living room.  But for the most part, there was just this one room that I spent all my waking time in.  So I guess I have kind of just continued that way.

The House of Moth has a smaller living room and a smaller home office.  I suspect the usage will continue much as before.  In fact, I don’t even have living room furniture anymore, as I threw away the old stuff (older than me, quite possibly) when I moved here.  The living room and most of the kitchen were furnished here so I never needed to buy anything for them.  So will I ever buy any living room furniture, when I know that I will almost never use it?  I don’t know.  The future is not ours to see.

I know I did experience some personality changes when I moved here. I believe that each location has its own ambience, what the ancients called the spirit of the place.  For instance, I used to have literally a ton of comics, and while superhero comics had been on the wane for a long time, I kept buying Japanese manga (black and white comics) until around the day I moved.  When I came here, I suddenly had no interest in them.  Like, at all.  I gave away almost all of them when I heard that I was moving again.  I also have barely looked at the comics that I kept, which I was sure I would want to read again.  When I came here, it was as if that part of my life was dead.

So who will I be if I move to the house I have rented at Møll? In theory some of the old me could come back, but probably not.  The house feels older and more similar to the house I grew up in, what with the bedrooms being upstairs from the rest of the house just like back there.  And the whole farm country ambiance certainly  could trigger some memories. I am not sure that would be a good thing. Actually I am pretty sure it would not.   The best outcome would be that I once again shed something – I am not sure what it would be this time – and live a simpler life.

One change is for sure.  I wonder if I am going to wake up in the deep of the night, suddenly wide awake and saying to myself: What was THAT?  Namely, the sound of the night train not thundering past.  Even though there are two houses and a road between here and the railroad, some of the trains in the night literally make the house shake.  I would probably not notice a genuine earthquake until things started falling down, so used am I to the house shaking from the roar of a hundred wheels on metal.  In contrast, the House of Moth lies on the edge of the broad, quiet river, not far above sea level. On the other side, green fields separate it from the road, which is straight as a ruler but not heavily trafficked.  I should be able to hear some cars passing by, but nothing like the earth-pounding roar here.

And there probably won’t be a portal to an alternate dimension in the bathroom.

No really, the bathroom here is a mystery.  It is a nice bathroom, with a small tub (albeit too short to be useful for me).  But the smells and sounds are truly baffling. And I don’t mean the smells and sounds I make.  No, when I come into the bathroom it may randomly smell of turpentine, or flowers, or some perfume I know I don’t have.  And sometimes when I am there, I hear voices outside. They sound like they come from the lawn right outside, but when I look out there is no one on the lawn or even in sight.   The voices definitely sound like they speak Norwegian, but I can never understand a single word.  It is just barely so distorted that I cannot hear what they say, but not so much that it could be any other language.  If I move to the kitchen, just one wall away, there are no voices outside, and no strange smells.  Only in the bathroom.

I am tempted to write a novel about a parallel world that exists behind our mirrors.  There is a big mirror in the bathroom after all.

Oh, and of course I accidentally predicted this before I even knew I would move here.  Just see this example from my very, very short-lived Chaos Node comic! Of course, it was prophetic in other ways too. Straddling different planes of reality is pretty much the order of the day for me now. Although hopefully in a more philosophical meaning, without actual voices from beyond.