Ars Materia

Leaving your country starts with getting rid of as many things as possible. You give your old CDs to your sibling’s friend. Donate your art books to a teacher. Throw out as many childhood mementoes as your mother allows. Sell your car. Swap your thick hoodies for your sibling’s t-shirts. Donate the rest of your clothes to a homeless shelter.

You pack books from your old lovers and birthday presents from your current lover. You pack art supplies because they’re expensive to replace. You pack your country’s flag. You buy power adapters.

You cross the world with everything you own in two suitcases and a messenger bag.

On the other side, you rent the first decent apartment you find. For a few days you sleep on an air mattress and eat sandwiches off paper plates. You buy a used table and chairs from an Irish couple down the road who are returning home. They give you scratched pots and pans for free. You buy a mattress new.

You get a new phone and a cheap data plan because you can’t imagine navigating a new country without internet.

You dig out your lover’s old cutlery set and a dusty box of plain white dinnerware from your in-laws’ garage. They gift you locally-made pottery a few pieces at a time, so you slowly build up a nicer set of matching dishes. Back home, your sibling inherits the dinnerware you inherited from your grandparents.

Over time, you put together a functioning apartment. You get a nice bookshelf from the store next door, but most of your furniture is cheap and practical. Your closets are occupied by suitcases. You put the ironing board and your lover’s guitars in the corner of the spare bedroom.

You pick up art here and there. A photo print from the furniture store, a painting from an artist at the local Comic-Con, authenticated art from the Dutch wife of a dead indigenous painter. It stays on your shelf because you don’t know how to hang it without damaging your walls, but maybe also because you’re afraid of making it feel like a home.

Your building gets evacuated in the middle of the night. Groggily, you take your wallet, passport, phone, keys, and favourite gift from your lover. It’s a false alarm.

You buy work boots and a broad-brimmed hat because you have to. You like being able to fit all your clothes in four drawers and a closet. It’s easier to pack if you leave, although you think more of visiting other countries for a year than of going home.

You buy laundry soap often enough to develop brand allegiance.

You decorate your fridge with magnets from countries you or your family have travelled to. Eventually you add one from a nearby florist and takeout menus from your and your lover’s favourite restaurants. The magnet with local emergency numbers holds up your grocery list.

The first Christmas, you buy a cheap, sparse tree from a budget department store. It’s the first time you’ve ever gotten to pick your own decorations. You colour-coordinate them with your wrapping paper. In January, you pack the tree in duct-taped, sharpie-labelled boxes and joke that you’re an adult now.

The second Christmas, you shop with a new friend and point out a figurine of your country’s national animal. Your friend gifts it to you. It gets a permanent spot on your desk.

The third Christmas, you give in and buy an electric mixer so you don’t have to mix your baking by hand anymore. Replacing your secondhand microwave feels like a commitment.

Your lover buys wine that needs to be aged for a decade. You don’t think about what that means until a week later.