Here's how it happens.

I understand now how it is that I've moved the same semi-unpacked stuff three different times. None of it is stuff I need, but none of what remains lacks in sentimental value. And so I don't unpack it first, because I don't need it in my daily life. And when I reach it at the end of unpacking, I'm too done with moving to sort it for real. And so it stays in a box, in a closet, until the next move, when I open the box, throw a few more things out, put some more things in, and take it to the next place.

Yes: this is my way of telling you that I've now unpacked all of the boxes I'm going to unpack, and I've consolidated and closeted the others. Now the decorating begins: photographs here, the whiteboard (on a wall at last!) there, my sunny Calder print over there. Tomorrow, perhaps my Norval Morrisseau poster. But the study now looks like a place where a writer might work; the bedroom is pretty much ready to be a place where a writer sleeps; the living room looks like the place where many film versions of Dracula could, at any moment, be rewatched in conjunction with an essay's getting done; the kitchen looks like a place where someone might eat if it weren't a hunger-devouring 97˚ outside. And if a restless dog weren't waiting for her at his house. To which she is now departing.

The haze has been so heavy today that it's fogged out the world's colors, whitened them all.