4 Tags: anecdotal, personal
6 > _Can we all start over
7 > After the final chapter's end?
8 > When it all starts over
9 > How do these scars begin to mend?_
13 I moved apartments the other week, on some philosopher's birthday or the anniversary of a national tragedy, to a nice studio in a nice neighborhood back on the correct side of the Caldecott Tunnel ([now that I've learned my lesson about](/2023/Jul/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer/#correct-side-of-the-tunnel) which side of the tunnel is correct).
15 I had been making noises about leaving Berkeley [for a while](/2020/Feb/cloud-vision/), but kept not getting around to it until my hand was forced by my roommate moving out. Insofar as I was complaining about the political culture, you might think that I should have fled the Bay entirely, to a different region which might have different kinds of people. Reno, probably. Or Austin (which may be the Berkeley of Texas, but at least it's the Berkeley _of Texas_).
17 I don't think a longer move was necessary. I mostly live on the internet, anyway: insofar as "Berkeley" was a metonym for [the egregore](/2019/Aug/the-social-construction-of-reality-and-the-sheer-goddamned-pointlessness-of-reason/), it's unclear how much leaving the literal city would help.
19 Although—it may not be entirely a coincidence that I feel better having left the literal city? Moving is a Schelling point for new beginnings, new habits. The [sense](/2022/Jun/an-egoist-faith/) [that](/2022/Apr/backlog-metablogging-april-2022/) my life is over hasn't fully gone away, but now I have more hope in finding meaning and not just pleasure in this afterlife [while it lasts](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/j9Q8bRmwCgXRYAgcJ/miri-announces-new-death-with-dignity-strategy), perhaps fueled by regret-based superpowers.
21 I'm happy. I have a lot of writing to do.
25 In my old neighborhood in the part of Berkeley that's secretly Oakland (the city limits forming a penninsula just around my apartment), there used to be a "free store" on the corner—shelves for people to leave unwanted consumer goods and to take them to a good home. It stopped being a thing shortly before I left, due to some combination of adverse attention from city municipal code inspectors, [and a fire](https://www.berkeleyside.org/2023/07/21/south-berkeley-free-store-destroyed-by-fire).
27 There was a butcher-paper sign on the fence with a pen on a string, asking community members to write a note on what the free store meant to them.
29 One of the messages read:
31 > i'm a (very broke) trans woman
32 > and i don't often feel great about
33 > my body, but there are a few items
34 > that i found here that fit me in a way
35 > thats very affirming to me
37 There are so many questions (of the rhetorical or probing varieties) I could ask of my neighbor who wrote that message. ([Why mention](/2021/Mar/point-man/) being trans at all? Don't many cis women often not feel great about their bodies? What do you think are the differences between you and a man who might have written a message starting "I'm a (very broke) transvestite"? Or is it just that such a man's sense of public decency would bid him keep quiet ... or, just possibly, write a message more like yours?)
41 I don't live there anymore.