But packing up and moving house is quite another matter. I’ve done this more times in my life than I’d care to count, including a couple of big moves from one side of the earth to another, from one hemisphere to another; moving house is just another ritual. Yet while packing doesn’t ruffle my feathers, unpacking is something I find immensely uncomfortable — there’s something disturbing about having to find a “permanent” place where things should belong. If I don’t consider the space I occupy in this life permanent, then how can I negotiate a home for things?

Two weeks after having moved into this new neighbourhood, my study/studio still resembles contemporary art gone wrong. Being one who dabbles in as many things as I can get my hands on, my art/craft equipment is varied, and my raw materials outweigh even my clothes, coming a close second to the number of books I own.

Several years ago, a friend asked, “Why not just throw everything away, and start afresh?” when she learned I’d shipped some of my things from Australia. I had an answer for her then, but I think I have a better answer now. When you’re a perpetual nomad, it’s not the where you put up your tent that matters, because you know anywhere you set foot can be home. Home could be almost anywhere provided I could bring tiny slices of my past and things I can build upon for a possible, immediate future — so I have physical reminders of who I am, who I have been, and some idea of how to tackle the road just ahead.

What seems to be an insurmountable hurdle is the time and energy it takes to make my physical work space an environment where I can be inspired in. So, for the next little while, there may be more than the usual amount of radio silence from me while I figure out what form this space should take.

But one thing got my goat: one of the panelists was going on about “the paperless office” being a goal we should aim for. I wondered if she was aware that the goal had been left for dead back at the beginning of the decade.

After question time, I went up to the front and questioned the panelist. Doesn’t she think that aiming for an entirely paperless office would create even more of a barrier between humans and nature, because paper is one of those mediums that inspire, that can in fact link humans back to nature – which should be the goal for creating a sustainable way of living? It was a long and complex question, and I didn’t get a satisfactory answer.

The question has bothered me a great deal since. Whatever similar ideas I had before on the matter, it all came down to this fascination with how physical objects relate us to our world, the artificial boundaries we create that separate us from nature, how our senses are shaped by the way we live and how our cultures evolve.

So, this blog is not (just) about being green. Looks like it’ll be an interesting road of discovery and discourse ahead.