change Archives - Ingrid Murray

(Un)Making a Home

A view of a living room that is well lit, cheerful, and artistically maximalistic.

A completely empty room with sunlight shining through the windows.

Familiarity is comfortable and change, no matter what it looks like, is unbearably hard.

Earlier this month, I said goodbye to an apartment I loved deeply, a safe space that was home to me for longer than any other place before it. (And look at that light!) This is the first place that I settled into and made my own. I celebrated my 30th birthday here. It was my cats’ first home, and where I honed my artistic style. While living in this apartment, I made friendships that will last a lifetime; I found my center and my self worth. This space saw me through the pandemic, through anguish and big joys, and I grew more here in the past five years than in all the years prior.

Before leaving, I worked for days alongside my mom and best friend, running on adrenaline, sorting through and clearing out a literal decades’ worth of things. We scrubbed and painted. We sold my car.

I kept little, but I’m grateful that so many of my things, curated with love, now live in my friends’ and family’s homes.

When the space was empty, we drove to the airport with my two cats. And after 14+ hours of travel, my mom and I arrived at in Cologne, Germany, and I was reunited with my husband.

My mom went home yesterday. It’s been a little over a week since we left Baltimore, and I am still acclimating to the time difference and processing all the change that’s happened and all the change to come.

And yes, while I’m thrilled to finally be here, it has also been immeasurably hard. But we are resilient, even when things are uncertain, even when we take a big leap outside of what is familiar. And through all this change, I’ll learn that home is anywhere there’s a sense of belonging — and vice versa.

Doorways

Close up of a trash bag containing various art supplies, including crayons, painted papers, charcoal, etc.

A hand holds a greyscale, loosely painted 3/4 portrait of a woman looking to the left, with minimal highlights in pink and green.

Time flies. Very soon, I’ll be living in Germany.

I’ve spent the last several months purging, going through a lifetime of papers, art supplies, trinkets, and things put in closets years ago and long forgotten about. Taking multiple trips to the donation center. Giving away beloved items, thrilled that many of them will have a new home with family and friends. Shedding so many old things, and making room for the new.

I got my first tattoos with two humans I love dearly, mementos to remind me of the community that is here for me, forever.

I can’t help but think, often, of Jonny Sun‘s book Goodbye, Again, where he writes so beautifully about life and transitions and joy and heartbreak. One quote, about how many final goodbyes we have already said, sticks with me — though my copy is currently already at my new home and I can’t find the exact words. But he’s also written that “goodbyes are doorways, never doors,” and I’m holding on to that, too.

It’s been incredibly bittersweet.

Impermanence

I’ve been thinking a lot about how nothing we share online is guaranteed.

We take it for granted that our Instagram posts will be there to refer back to years later, or that the connections we make on Twitter will last no matter how many times the company changes hands. But really, like everything else in life, change is a constant and nothing is promised.

Over more than a decade, I’ve built a little community of online friends through social media who are kind, generous, and talented artists. There’s Jana Clinard-Harris and Tammy Garcia and Hanna Andersson, who have inspired me and challenged me and encouraged me for years and years. I’ve bought art from Aydin Hamami, Pamela Bates, Emma Howell, Courtney White, and Reneesha Wolfe. I’ve exchanged materials and art with Erin Knepp and Anna Okrasinski Maddox. I did a collaboration with Max Devereaux and joined Under the Influence Art Journaling thanks to a social media introduction.

In short: the connections we make online are real and meaningful and wonderful, and also, due to the nature of social media itself, vulnerable.

I carved out this corner of the world, this website and my newsletter, in part to “own” a little bit of land on the internet. No matter what happens with my accounts elsewhere, this is my home. I’ve also dipped my toes into Mastodon in hopes that a decentralized system may allow for online connections for a longer period of time.

With all that’s going on in the digital world right now, I encourage you to preemptively seek out and save the names and websites of those whose art or virtual company you enjoy. Join their mailing lists. Share yours, too.

(Now, there’s always a chance that everything online will disintegrate at some point, but that’s why I have a paper journal, too.)

Edit: “What happens when the world’s knowledge is held in a quasi-public square owned by a private company that could soon go out of business?“

Ode to Summer

The heat in Baltimore has finally broken and it’s under 90°F for the first time in months. It’s lovely — my windows are wide open for much of the day, my cats firmly planted on the windowsills. It’s also a reminder that fall is just around the corner.

When this time of year hits, I spend more time in the present, soaking up every bit of sun and warmth, like Frederick the mouse, and noticing and appreciating all the little things about the season that will soon be a memory. This summer, especially, I am gathering up all the things about this season and this neighborhood.

Change is on the horizon: after five years of living in my current home, this is the last summer I will be here. I want to remember all the little things I have noticed and loved, to remember when it’s cold and dark and I am homesick.

Especially, I want to remember how early summer’s fireflies transition to the late summer sound of cicadas and crickets, and how the goldfinches gather in the thistles in June and July and make their way to the echinacea in August. I want to remember the deer who graze mostly unfazed on the hill behind the new development (and the foxes who played there last winter).

I want to remember the turn of each road, the walks with friends, the little libraries, the impromptu dog park, and how the ghosts of other seasons linger in kinesthetic memory as I pass — snow and holiday decorations, the lilacs and magnolias in bloom, wild cicadas making their 17-year debut in 2021, pumpkins and fourth of July banners.

This is a bittersweet moment. Change always is. For now, I will be present and soak up every moment.

And when he told them of the blue periwinkles, the red poppies in the yellow wheat, and the green leaves of the berry bush, they saw the colors as clearly as if they had been painted in their minds.”
Leo Lionni