"Start Over"

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+Title: Start Over
+Date: 2023-09-23 21:15
+Category: other
+Tags: anecdotal, personal
+
+> _Can we all start over  
+> After the final chapter's end?  
+> When it all starts over  
+> How do these scars begin to mend?_
+>
+> —_Centaurworld_
+
+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).
+
+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_).
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+I'm happy. I have a lot of writing to do.
+
+-----
+
+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).
+
+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.
+
+One of the messages read:
+
+> i'm a (very broke) trans woman  
+> and i don't often feel great about  
+> my body, but there are a few items  
+> that i found here that fit me in a way  
+> thats very affirming to me
+
+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?)
+
+But—not my neighbor.
+
+I don't live there anymore.

diff --git a/content/drafts/start-over.md b/content/drafts/start-over.md
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-Title: Start Over
-Date: 2023-09-18 12:00
-Category: other
-Tags: anecdotal
-Status: draft
-
-> _Can we all start over  
-> After the final chapter's end?  
-> When it all starts over  
-> How do these scars begin to mend?_
->
-> —_Centaurworld_
-
-I moved apartments the other week, on some philosopher's birthday or the anniversary of a national tragedy, to a studio 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).
-
-[TODO: I had thought I had to leave Berkeley, but that was a metonym
-
-my reasonably comfortable afterlife /2022/Jun/an-egoist-faith/
-
-]
-
-Here in the part of Berkeley that's secretly Oakland, 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's gone now, due to some combination of adverse attention from city municipal code inspectors and a fire, which means I need to find some other place to dump my spare junk in the next week and a half.
-
-Now there's 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.
-
-One of the messages reads:
-
-> i'm a (very broke) trans woman  
-> and i don't often feel great about  
-> my body, but there are a few items  
-> that i found here that fit me in a way  
-> thats very affirming to me