I moved into my guest house in Pico-Robertson in August of 1997. I found an ad for the place on a bulletin board at Aish Ha Torah.
I was happy in my hovel. It was small, about 200 square feet, but my needs were few beyond high speed internet access so I could act out my mental illness in front of the world.
Then along came plans for the place and I had to move along.
When I first moved to Los Angeles in March of 1994, I lived out of my 1977 Datsun stationwagon and moved frequently. Each move took me only an hour. I didn’t have much stuff.
Boy, times have changed. I’ve accumulated a lot of stuff.
When I found out on the last day of Passover this year that I’d need to move, I felt frightened. How would I find an affordable place to stay in Pico-Robertson? I felt the apocalypse approaching. I feared my choices. I hated the loss of my time as I’d have to go hunting for a new place.
So I found a place. It’s big. It’s nice. It’s a perfect place to teach Alexander Technique.
And I started throwing out my stuff. About a quarter of it.
I figured it would take me about three hours to move.
It ended up taking me ten hours. I worked through the day Sunday, moving stuff into my van, and cleaning out the guest house I was leaving. I got tired and feverish. My back hurt. I felt myself compressing through the pain, which increased it.
I stopped three times to do active rest with my legs up a wall, creating room and relieving pressure on my lower back.
By 7 p.m., I was done.
Friends generously let me crash with them for two weeks while I wait to move into my new place. So I stay in their guest house. The toilet doesn’t work right so I can only do a number two in the main house. No more metamucil for me! Cutting back on the fruit! I like to stay loose but not this loose!
This morning, I went to the main house and found it locked and everyone gone! Panic! I drove away and everything worked out.
Now the little girl has abandoned this computer and I can type out my feelings for you.
I found moving shattering. It made me take a good look at myself. I had to decide what I wanted to take with me to my new place and what I wanted to leave behind.
I ended up throwing out my collection of newspapers and magazines that featured me on their cover. I threw out my scrapbooks of clippings. I threw out my videos of my TV appearances. I threw out my narcissism and now I’m completely cured!
Moving was shattering because I had to ask for help. I didn’t need help to move. Not much anyway, just a place to store some stuff for two weeks and a place to crash for two weeks. But I found myself asking friends if they knew of a cheap place to rent in the community.
I don’t like to ask for help. It’s humbling. I want to be a great man so that I can simply hint about the help I need and then people come rushing.
I always thought I’d become a great writer and people would fly me around the world and hire me to speak at exorbitant rates and pretty young women would throw themselves at me.
Out of all these motivations, the pretty young women was the strongest.
I think I’m a pretty typical narcissist with erotic rage who’s driven to be great so that he can be more attractive to women. And while he’s doing this, he’s destroying his chances at normal human relationships, thus inhibiting his chances at greatness, growing more isolated, sad, and disconnected from himself, from others, and from God.
Thank God for 12-step programs, for friends, for God and Torah and shul and psycho-therapy and for being alive at age 45 and preparing for Yom Kippur and seeking to change my life for the good and perhaps one day marry and have kids and a respectable position in the community.
A man can dream!
