Two for Tuesday

Yes there will be shortcuts to make it through NaBloPoMo this time around, more than ever!

Two recent favorite moments:

Last week, while at my internship, a lovely 83 year old woman whose mouth was tucked into itself because she hadn't put her teeth in, gently reached up to point to my nose and said: "I like your nose earring". Such a sweet moment.

In a moment of clarity I realized that I could move the drying rack from the left to the right side above the sink. It totally opened up the appearance of lightness in the kitchen area. Small changes can make one so happy.

Life is all around

Today, upon exiting my cabin, I scared the last fledgling that had just left the nest next to my door. The little critter was on the grass just past the porch and was startled into a hopping, not quite flying motion before settling back on the grass a few feet away. (You can see a small black box if you look up for the string of the sky chair, which is the speaker, perched atop that is the nest.)

Last summer the nest was empty, th

is year every time I left my home, or crossed onto the porch, the mama bird swooped out of the nest, flying to a nearby tree. A few weeks ago the high pitched squawking announced that hatching had occurred. I believe there were 2-3 of the little beings.

This

last one grew visibly in the last week, becoming less gawky looking as time progressed. He, or she would cling to the nest and flap it's wings

wildly in the last few days, but still afraid, or not strong enough to unclench it's claws from the twiggy mess.

Later today, I discovered Dora, the cat of the main house has gone and killed me a mouse - a fat one at that. Still later, I startled a fawn just on the other side of the fencing that protects the gardens. So much nature here, I love it.

All this development reminds me of all the gro

wing I've done in the last two years, and especially the last year since taking residence here at the cabin (the blessed abode for which I am grateful for every.single.day). Though I haven't written a great deal in the last several months, so much continues to shift inside, and out. This week is my last at my Crime Victims Assistance Program job - I am terribly sad about leaving. There is SO much more for me to learn and I really like it there. It has been amazing to discover I can like a job, especially one that is close to my chosen field. Later this month I will find out about my internship placement - which has me excited and a bit nervous. A month after that school starts. A whole new journey, one long in coming. I feel ready for school this time around in a fashion that I didn't have before - determination is a word that floats around my head a good deal when thinking about this program.

Life just keeps moving forward.

Little House on the Prairie Goes Post-Modern

Since May I have been living in a cabin on my friend's property. I love this place, it is my home, my nest, my sanctuary. I have no idea how long I will be here but I am grateful for it each and every day (whether I'm here or not - in October I was gone about 23 days in total!). The property (the main house and the cabin) has a deer fencing around a great deal of it which is part of why I have nicknamed it "the compound".

Anyway. It's up the mountain a bit from the center of New Paltz and the temperature up here is always different from town. Though there are other options, I have decided to heat primarily via the wood stove - not that I know anything about maintaining one for heat in the depths of winter. It also occurred to me that I could cook via the stove, since I don't have a cook stove or oven here. About three weeks ago I attempted this just a bit by halving a butternut squash - grown by the gentleman farmer that is my friend. Putting a bit of water in a cast iron pan I put them in, covered with aluminum foil and attempted to "roast" it to use in a soup the next day. Yeah, well the fire didn't stay all that hot overnight. They were partially cooked. Oh well.

Fast forward to today. Picture this if you will:

I am tidying my nest in part because it was FILTHY and in part because I have out of town friends coming over (go me!). After dusting and vacuuming I decide to do this soup thing on the wood stove but I need a shower too. Besides my hair is already wet from dashing out in the rain to cover the hopelessly damp unstacked wood and grab some of the drier stacked, covered wood so I can make soup and keep the house toasty. Well while I'm at it, I thought I'd color my hair for fun. So there I am in black sweats, topless, my hair wet with water and dye, a towel around my neck and back with a pan on the stove heating up while I slice onions. Mind you I am facing a huge picture window that is visible should the kindly landowner wander by on the way to his car. Luckily it's a week day and it's raining so odds are good that he is hard at work in the house. I finish dicing the onions, tend to the fire to try to get the oiled pan is heating, then dash into the shower.

My hair has warm tones, the nest is tidy, the onions, carrots, and mushrooms are sauteed. I have wireless internet, lots of warm blankets for chilly nights. Laura Ingalls never had it so good.

More thought of what is home

Just moments ago I finally, finally finished American Gods by Neil Gaiman. What a truly amazing book on so many levels: deep, challenging, dark, a bit of very dark humor, fascinating take on old religions. I highly recommend this book but be warned it is not a happy read and it is long.

On one of the last pages:

He sat down on a grassy bank and looked at the city that surrounded him, and thought, one day he would have to go home. And one day he would have to make a home to go back to. He wondered whether home was a thing that happened to a place after a while, or if it was something that you found in the end, if you simply walked and waited and willed it long enough.

This resonates so much for me as I have given a lot of thought about what "home" means, how one feels at home; whether home is something you carry with you; how people can feel like home. Certainly the last 15 or so months has been a continuation of that search in a very lived way, of that hope of figuring out what I want home to feel like, look like but I am much in the same spot I was in when I wrote the post above. It's true that overall my old neighborhood of Historic South Park was fabulous, the overall vibe of that part of the country, my sense of disconnect there was something I was happy to leave - though there are people from that region that miss almost daily regardless of the connections and reconnections I have forged since leaving in March 2009. It is the people that I bonded to that make that place home but I feel safe in saying I will not live in Southern Ohio ever again.

For better or worse, as I said to my therapist, I am imminently flexible about many things, where I live being one of them. There are some wonderful positive things about being imbued with this quality; however the challenges are many both to myself and to the people who love me. I know this. It is possible that what I need is to become a bit less flexible, which for me means continuing to learn how to put myself higher up in the food chain of priorities, state my desires, intent, and dreams more clearly. This may mean shaking some people loose in terms of their standing in my considerations, not something I am comfortable with or practiced in. Even if that doesn't happen the prospect of finding a way to express and live my inner core is scary; uncharted territory that needs to be acknowledged, tended to for things to grow, for me to grow.

In the meantime, this sweet, funky cabin is my physical home, one I make more so every day. Especially the last two days as my kitchen things are here (still in boxes and some will not stay here - did I mention I have a LOT of kitchen things?). My spices are on a tiny shelf, disordered (usually they exist in alphabetical order) but just knowing they are here, adding their perfume even on the most minute level, makes it more like home for me. Today I cleaned off the camping stove/grill so that I can begin to actually cook somewhere besides the microwave, washed one set of windows. All steps to letting myself settle in here. Really, this place is sweet - y'all should come visit me.

A bit ago I sat outside with my coffee and toast, finishing the above novel, while a lovely summer storm ebbed and flowed. I reveled in the smells of summer rain, drinking from my lovely coffee bowl (Thanks Sarah! I <3 you so much!), listening to the wind and rain, I felt a moment of peace that was so sweet it was almost like an altered state. I felt released from the anxiety and grief that has marred my days of late, I felt a burgeoning of hope for myself that is still ethereal that it feels much removed from reality, but I will try to remember that I make that reality. I have a choice in how I see myself, my options; I have a choice in how I respond to feelings, thoughts, people, and the events sets in my path. We all have that ability, sometimes it's easy to forget that.

Fly Away Home

Ladybug ladybug
Fly away home
Your house is fire
And your children are all gone

I am safe and fine but I learned that the house I owned in Northampton is gone. Not through fire but through demolition. A friend wrote to tell me that it is totally different, set further back from the road, turned ninety degrees. The news blew me away, left me feeling shaky, like the ground had moved underneath me and now there is less of it there. It is like a further unlinking, disconnection from my past, marking how much has changed in my life since I left there on September 10, 2001.

It wasn't my idea to buy a house, it was M's (an ex), it was her parents' gift of money that was the down payment that put us in the market. I knew it was a mistake, that getting deeper in with her was not a good idea. The house was not particularly cute, the only appealing place was the back porch - that back porch was a haven for me throughout the time I lived there. When the inside with it's semi-done renovation annoyed me, when the lack of gracious architectural details galled me, when I was angry, when I was sad, when I was peaceful - there was the back porch warm like a blanket, snug like a slipper molded to your foot with it's view of woods, a giant oak tree, my porch held me.

When I realized I was leaving is when I realized how attached I was to this place, my first true home. Not because I bought it, not because I remortgaged it on my own after M and I split (I ended things just about one year from when we purchased it) but partly because it was the longest I had lived anywhere in my entire life. 18 Winslow Avenue was my home for nine years. It's hard to remember but I think the next longest I lived at one address was four, maybe five years. I have moved over thirty times but here was this ugly duckling that I made into a cozy nest and I didn't realize it until I needed to leave it. In the last few months I lived there Chris and I worked round the clock to fix it up; finally I had wood trim in my living room, my new countertop in the kitchen, the sweet wood brackets to the wide gaping doorway to soften the look and so the chi would flow better.

Before I knew I was leaving, I finally had the front garden the way I had pictured, immature but on it's way. Tears streamed down my face as I picked lettuce knowing I would not be there to do it next season. Every day for three weeks once the decision to move was made I cried. It took all my energy not to deck the realtor I thought was amazing when she told me I had to change things.

Now it's gone. My first thought when I heard was about sheet rocking the living room. January 1994 Chris and I were adding quarter inch sheet rock to the measly, dented, ripped wall that existed underneath the 70's wood paneling I had finally ripped off after attempting to paint over at least twice. It was the early days of our relationship and I was terribly happy, still feeling burdened by having a house I could not afford but glad I was able to make it nicer nonetheless. In a fit of giggly romance I grabbed a bottle of red nail polish and wrote our initials with a heart on the old wall - it was a silly thing that would never be seen. And now that wall, the symbol of my past is a pile of rubble.

Each summer when I pass through I visit my neighbor, the one right next door. I cannot imagine what it will feel like to be there and the little, nondescript white house that held no charm but that I nurtured into a home filled with my own kind of magic, made into a place where people felt welcome, that often could not hold all the laughter that was created there will be gone. There will be a hole in the ground that only I can see, that will make only me weep with knowledge that I have moved on.

A Day in the Valley

No I didn't go anywhere, this is the metaphorical valley, where one resides when they fall from a lovely high. Last night I stayed up too late, tired but not wanting to give in to sleep, alone in a bed for the first time in two weeks. As the light rose I woke frequently but was now on the other side of things, not wanting to get up and face the day. Drifting in the in between state I thought how I didn't feel like hauling down to the city for Janet's performance (as much as I love her and wanted to go), nor was I feeling inspired to head up to New Paltz tomorrow for any part of the DNE weekend. I was in a wallowing mood. Feeling sad for myself at all the things I need to do that I have been setting aside.

I thought about why I wasn't enjoying this quietude more and I realized that staying at Sunny's is a stop gap, that I had left home behind with BC. Everywhere else has become the place I visit. But it just feels too soon, way too soon to move in so I am left with figuring out my next steps about where to be in between visits home.

As much as I have loved the last seven plus months of bouncing about, it is getting a little old, harder to focus within all this. There are time I so want a dresser and a closet that it is almost an ache. In the meantime I will hang things up here at Sunny's, finally, instead of having them in five different places. It's a step towards normalcy.

So tonight I am in my little packed room of stuff, mostly Sunny's but my mess overruns the space as well, missing my sweetheart, taking a break from knitting, making a list of the things I will accomplish in the next two weeks before I go home again, home again jiggity jig.

The horoscope hits home

As I believe I have mentioned before, I adore Rob Brezsny's horoscopes. Per Sunny's suggestion eons ago I always read my sun sign and my rising sign's forecast, especially his. Many times in recent months it has seemed like he was writing just for me. While my sun sign hit home and was meaningful, this week's meditation for my rising resonated deep and hard.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): It might be tempting to turn your home into a
womb-like sanctuary and explore the mysteries of doing absolutely
nothing while clad in your pajamas. And frankly, this might be a good idea.
After the risks you've taken to reach out to the other side, after the
bridges you've built in the midst of the storms, after the skirmishes
you've fought in the Gossip Wars, you have every right to retreat and get
your homebody persona humming at a higher vibration. So I say: Be
meticulously leisurely as you celebrate the deep pleasures of self-care.

The last several months, since deciding to and actually leaving Dayton have been a hard and exhilarating journey, there have been moments of deep grief, of knowing people were sitting in judgment, sure that people were writing their own version of what they perceived to be the truth no matter how far from my reality their story was, and I practiced deeply at letting go other people's stories about me. Every so often it comes up again, as it did a few weeks ago but this time I had a harder being a good Buddhist about it, wanting to contact the person to call them on their behavior, to chastise them for stirring the pot, for speaking out of turn. In the end I did none of those things but I did sit in my stew, rant about the ability of people to make trouble, and eventually I let it go.

As the sun fades less of the day is lit, the temperatures start to gently drop, the urge to hibernate, to hole up has begun to blossom in me. Yet I am still largely roaming and have no place that is home, not full time. The struggle to find a rhythm with no outside structure becomes bigger as time creeps on and the urge to contemplate my own navel becomes a stronger pull. My self care needs to include a schedule, a set of goals, perhaps even daily (other than getting out of bed) seems a way to lick my wounds and do more inner work; it really should be no surprise to me but yet it catches me off guard that I still feel hurt and angry about my last relationship. Though my wild ideas of foreign travel seem further away, it does not mean I need to forgo gathering my forces to challenge myself in other ways, so training for a potential hiking adventure will be part of the nurturing I give myself. As to contemplating the mysteries of doing nothing, I think I excel at that too well with no further enlightenment, so in order to work the idea of nothingness in a new fashion I purchased Yoga Journal's special issue, Yoga for Beginners in a fit of inspiration, or desperation, hard to know which in this case.

Regardless of where I lay my head, I can work on cultivating my inner cozy home. The addition of the fabulous Life is Good socks and pullover BC got will definitely help and are portable to boot.

I believe I found the answer

To a question posed by a dear friend about a year ago, by reading a book on that same friend's shelf.

For those who are not familiar with this piece of my story (and I don't expect any of you to be) I moved from Massachusetts to California because my partner at the time got a job out there. Nine months ago I moved from the left coast to Ohio because of a pull of family, unfinished business, and most immediately a job (versus chronic unemployment in California) of TGF. While prepping for that move, and dealing with grief about leaving the coast and fears of the land of Ohio (much whining about these things was done on this blog, sorry about that), my friend expressed concern about this apparent pattern. (I don't see it as a pattern so much as the path I'm on.) She asked while we Google chatted, "where do you want to live?". I have pondered this question a lot (sorry I never told you Jennie) and have been sitting with it. It occurred to me that I don't have a particular drive to live in any part of the country because to me it's all filled with possibility. As soon as I rule out a region I may lose something incredible that was supposed to be part of my journey. Today I am at Jennie's house, wearing her bathrobe which is soft and lightweight which makes me realize I need an article of clothing like this of my own, sitting on the couch, reading Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's "Casts Off". All in all it's a very light hearted book and a bit silly but it has some great quotes. The that reached out to me this morning is this:

One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things." - Henry Miller

I am not a particular fan of Henry Miller's work, having never sought it out however this sums up the answer that has been swirling in my head for a year. It is always about how you live a place, not as much where it is. Yes, yes, there are places that may be intrinsically better for us hippie, lesbian, alternative, witchy-jewish-buddhist types than others. Certainly Ohio was never on my list of places to visit for anything much at all let alone become a resident, yet that is where my path has led me and already it has offered me so much concretely and ethereally. It has challenged (some) of my assumptions about such place, it has been refreshingly friendly and accepting. I have made friends and almost a peace with my coastal biases and snobbery about the middle of the country. If I had not made a commitment to my partner, if I was not optimist and conscious, I would have never made this move. I would have never allowed myself to be open and trust my intuition that flowed through me when we happened on our neighborhood. The gratefulness I feel for that day when my body vibrated on something in the air in South Park that said "this is where I can feel at home", I would have lost something amazing, something I didn't think still existed - a true neighborhood, one that was not insular but accepting of new residents, eager to bring them into the fold and say "you belong here".

So Jennie, while there are places I have lived that I have loved and feel connected to, and in theory I could find a number of new places to make home in the decades I hope to have before me, there is no one place that has absolutely everything I want. There are still other places that I may harbor a desire to inhabit to deeply experience however I do not need to have a plan to find them, I do not need to be sad that I may never claim them as home. My mantra is that I hope and will work to always find what I need wherever my journey lands me.

First time in awhile

Since I last saw this, snow on my car. Yesterday morning was a quiet time in the house, TGF was reading the paper, the animals were calm, and there was a light flurry outside. Sipping on coffee I watched the tiny flakes falling and just had to go out in the freezing temperature, not even bothering to put shoes on and snapped a shot before it all disappeared.



Later the snow was gone from the cars and the rooftops. Wyatt and I took a great walk around the neighborhood. Speaking of the puppyman, I have to share this photo of him. He has been loving driving in the car and taking in all the smells. See for yourselves.



There are still leaves on a lot of trees but many more on the ground, with colours strong and faded. The crunch of leaves under my feet delight me everyday, like a cacophony of cracking, shushing, and softly folding under pressure.

Steps towards home

Sunday the 14th TGF left to go to Marion Indiana for her corporate training and she wasn't to return until sometime Wednesday - which was moving day. In the meantime there was a lot take care of in the meantime. Monday I began packing up the motel room and loading up the car.

Late morning Wyatt and I got in the car to go to the new place so I could rip up the carpeting. I first needed to get some tools, like a utility knife which would make things go so much faster. The weather was warm and I took frequent breaks to cool down, to walk Wyatt, or watch a little television. In the bedroom I was disappointed not to find a wood floor but tiles. Peeking in the second bedroom (our office) there was only carpeting. I found a little corner and began digging around at the tile and did indeed find wood under that. Gleeful I cleaned up a bit and dashed up the block to the tent on the Greenway for Rehabarama fairly confident I would find our landlady. I was hopeful that she would let me dig away but I wanted to just make sure, be the responsible tenant and all that. As predicted she was staffing the table so I was able to chat with her. She said she would send her husband over to check on it but it would probably be fine. I practically skipped back to the house. Wood floors! An accessible neighborhood!

For evening plans I had several choices before me which was so surprising I could barely believe I had just moved here.
1. Continue working on the house
2. Go down to Centerville to hand with Jeriann and Cody
3. Go to a North Dayton Stitch n Bitch and see potentially see other locals knitters (this was back near the motel)
4. Go to the Dayton Knitting Guild meeting that happens practically around the corner from the house.
I opted to go to the Guild meeting dusty and sweaty, without a knitting project to be had. It was fun and I chatted with a young woman I had "met" on Ravelry. Too much fun all in all.

Tuesday I was a woman on a mission - rip as much of the tile and substrate off the bedroom floor as possible. Basically I worked my butt off. Luckily Jer and Cody picked me up some dinner and helped me haul all the debris out of the bedroom so that furniture could be put in there the next day. I did not get all of the crappage off, in fact I still need to finish it. I found another surprise underneath the tile and hardboard - a linoleum room of sorts in a rose pattern. I do have photos of this, I really do but I still cannot find the cable that connects the camera to the computer. Sigh.

Wednesday was moving day and it started earlier than I had expected which was great. Bonus TGF got to leave her training a bit earlier so she was able to help direct traffic with the movers while I shifted things behind and ahead of them.

Finally after a month of numerous motel beds of greatly varied quality we slept on our mattress, surrounded by our beasts. We had found a home and it was trashed but I was blissfully happy to have landed somewhere, somewhere that was shaping (and has only been continuously so) to be fabulous.