Homing Devise

I’m traveling out east tomorrow  There’ll be a family reunion and then I’ll stay with Ed while Pam gets a break.  I’ve done the prep, packed, finally vacuumed and washed the floors/, and feel kinda dazed.  It’s like I haven’t been settled Here long enough to have an anchor as I travel to somewhere Else.     Home needs to be like a felt sense homing devise.  It’s interesting how my car’s gps has figured it out with out any input from me. It now tells me how far I a from home and it means here.   I wonder when I’ll feel that in my bones        Honey’s getting it. She knows where to turn when we’re out for walks.  But when we go to the farm she disappears into her labyrinth of farm smells,  poop and carrion

What makes something home… I remember when I moved mom from her independent apartment into Assisted Living.  Her memory was gone and I was worried shed be scared and bot know where she was  but she told me that though she didn't know where she was , she know she was in the right place because she recognized her furniture and pictures.     So maybe seeing my beloveds furniture and pictures will become my gps’s homing devise

The Radio in the Back Room

I’ve always been aware of the background music of my life. I can just tune in and hear whatever music my unconscious  feels is the soundtrack at that moment.  Like the time during my divorce when I had a dream that had background music “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do”.   And I’ve also been able to tune into the random thoughts and associations and memories that are way behind what the front part of my mind is engaged with.  I’m not always sure what to make of it. It’s not deep wisdom or truths I should listen to. It’s more like an auditory version of the visual after image when you’ve stared at something too long.   But sometime it surprises me and I realize perhaps there’s another reality I should take into account.  I saw an old friend at Quaker meeting the other day, and everything in the back room was saying I DON’T WANT TO reengage with her.   Nothing subtle.  But I’d have a hard time explaining why to myself.  I feel she’d like to get back into relationship and I DON’T WANT to   

The radio in the back room warned me when I first met Tom.  I was extremely uncomfortable and couldn’t figure out why. We were waiting for my friend to return from school. He wasn’t hitting on me or anything. But I was so uncomfortable that I made an excuse to get up and go around the block to kill time. When I returned she still wasn’t there and after a bit I got the same feeling.  And then I vividly remember thinking “I wonder what’s going on here? I wonder if were going to get married and there’ll be some painful thing like with dad and Enid and mom”.  No joke. That radio was onto some deep stuff.  Not that the nonsense syllables and earworm tunes reveal meaning most of the time, (at least that I can figure out at the time)  but listening to my dreams and just noticing the background thoughts  may be what reveals not only my theme music for this new era but also what the first new dance steps should be.   I’m  Listening 

Sick Dog

 Honey’s been sick since Tues night and it’s disturbing. I’m used to letting things settle but did take her into the vet on Thurs and $450 later they say she’s “all good”    But it isn’t. She’s had three days of the runs.   It’s funny I felt such release when I gave up being responsible for the chickens, yes helping out with the moving in from summer pasture but they just weren’t on my mind as much.  Honey is all I have left that I’m responsible for    Thinking back to all the animals and kids and partners and siblings that I’ve been responsible for over the decades.  To be honest I’m tired of it.    But my sick dog is mine. And tomorrow I need to call back the vet.   Sigh

The Theme music of changing Eras

 I’m looking for theme music of this new era.  I remember the music of my starting college in Chicago music, Bill Evans, Joni Mitchel, John Coltrane and Smokey Robinson ….. and my roommates Donovan. Listening to any of it takes me back to how I felt in that crazy altered state of 1967     The then there’s the music as I had kids Little White Duck and Free to Be You and Me.  And the pain of the divorce era. Meg Christian and Turning It Over.     The falling in love with Gil music was Jan Garbarek and Keith Jarret and all the disco of the 80s.     David’s prison time  Fat Freddy’s Drop  still brings tears to my eyes.  And then all the Latin music that Gil soaked me in    I still remember the arousal of Mi Tierra  and Los Van Van  the Koln concert of our wedding. During the crazy intense days toward the end of his life Cassandra Wilson’s Shelter From the Storm made me cry on repeat.  Also too weird  that song sometimes no kidding would just start playing on my computer or in the car without my putting it on or even having listened to it in weeks!!      

  After he died I sort of stopped listening to music.  Not sure why.  Some of it was I’d been so overstimulated all those years of crisis. That I wanted to fall into no sensation.    Some of it was that Gil had been my source for new music  and now that pipe line had dried up.      I listened to my old music and the Gil Memorial music  until it stopped making me tear.  And then it was silence    

Not all silence is created equal 

Now in my new space, attempting new habits    I want to find some new music that my body can associate with this new era.    I need new Theme music.   Something lyrical but with some salty sour chords  something that resolves with hopeful keys.     Something with a drive that gets into a grove  that holds    I feel a little like West Side Story with “Something’s Coming”.     Theme music can’t be prescribed it’ll have to come out of left field and grab me! Or else slip into my dreams  on repeat.    I just need to listen for it and recognize it’s resonance

Waiting fir the rebirth of Wonder

 Sydney asked me, “so what do you all day’.  And I found myself saying I’m not filling it.   I do a little of this and a little of that but I want to become a little bored, a little restless  so I can truly look around and ask myself with some appetite,. What do you want?    There’s an old like about “You can’t kill time without injuring eternity”.  

I’m fixing this, getting ideas for that but basically  I’m waiting for my eyes to become accustomed to the dark so to speak so I can start seeing feeling what’s here, what’s possible    Busyness and accomplishing may feel good but they don’t feed the Rebirth of Wonder”

Settling

 I’m settling. Moving things into new more convenient places. Figuring out novel ways to solve problems   The half fridge which is all I have room for in this ship sized room, is a pain in the neck/back to see what’s on the shelves. And everything in the back freezes   I was to old about refrigerator drawers!  Expensive but def would enable me to see what I’ve got. An elegant solution!  But I’d have to move the trash can…and the one place it might fit would only work if I trade out the “thinking chair” for the new swivel one but then…. You get the drift   The dust of the move is settling 

And my social life is starting up. I went out to eat with some old friends  kind of impulsively.  I never could do that out at the farm.  Been reaching out to old friends from my distant past as they pop into my mind   Even talking about a trip to England !  Who IS this woman!?  I’ve had a moment or two of restlessness.  I’m looking forward to more    And what I’ll do about it

4 weeks in or the subjective experience of Time

 it’s been 4 weeks since i started this experiment in living above a garage.  It feels oddly like a long time and a short time.  I’ve had this theory about the subjective experience of time. My theory is you mark time through the number of moments of awareness.  Auto pilot can make a day pass in a flash, and boredom where you look up every moment “are we there yet” can feel like forever.    

Living in a new place, setting new patterns involves many moments of awareness   But it also involves plowing through new activities which just take doing not noticing. So the slow and the fast passage experience    It’s dawning on me what a BIG change this is.  Not fear or regret  but maybe a kind of awe that I did it.   I’m still avoiding busyness but I am impulsively reaching out to folks from my past.  I think my balance to doing/reflecting is about right.  And I’m not beating up on myself when I don’t accomplish what I’d hoped to each day. Still curious about how the adjustment process will play out.  I want to notice it all and slow down this exit ramp I’m on.