Enter, February: and Then…

Last day of January. A month from now, early March and expectation of a blooming thing. And mud. I will not miss the mud. But I will miss the buds–especially later in March the pinking up of the maple buds, at first just visible in just the right light, early or late, when the reds of morning or evening sun hit the ridges. How that bit of color lifts my spirits after the monochrome of winter!

By then, the sun rises sooner and sets noticeably later, and on the longest day of 2020, we will own RHC. Will we by then live there and someone else live at GCK–in this very room where I sit listening to the ticking of the wood stove, through whose glass doors I see the light flickering off the cat, draped out like an accent of farmhouse decor in its warmth.

We are relinquishing the sense (the illusion) of permanence, of predictability of what happens in a week or a month, living with the risk every day that strangers will come, will purchase our roots out from under us, our foundation, our bedrock routines and habits and familiar navigation in time and space in this place.

And odder, that we want this to happen, that it must happen, given the course we have set for ourselves, dictated by the ticking of the clock, the passing of the seasons through our minds and bodies, leaving less and less to work with as the sand falls through the hourglass. And yet, there is sand left.

I am uncertain. Will it make leaving that last day harder or easier to hold up each view, each memory from the well-traveled places we have sat or stood or walked, of each room in the house, the windows from them that have been like dioramas to the seasons–not just anywhere but the seasons through that window of this house in this lifetime. My life time. Our life time. Should I stand and look again, and remember or walk past, on task and on time for what the move requires of me that moment? How stoic or nostalgic should one be just now?

All this self-absorbed perseveration in my morning pages about the move makes it seem like my life is lopsided and out of balance; like I am obsessing about this imminent transition of necessity ahead of us. And yes, the details, the moving parts require much thinking and deciding and planning.

But my days of late have assumed a better balance, everything inside being in its place now and the only thing to do, at least today, is wait for a showing, and go from there. The house is in order, and the yard, and the details of the sale. And so my own peculiar interests have come back in view, and I make occasional progress digging deeper in one or another subjects that I want or need to know more about. Life is rich. In predictable and irregular spurts.

And I have a new minor and regular duty: to write an occasional column for the Floyd Press. Again. I had a bimonthly column there for 7 years, ending in 2011. The new editor has been in touch, and is lining up a list of writers who have stated a wish to contribute within their interest and knowledge areas, and that will begin soon. I suppose my general topic area is sustainability — which can be very broad indeed. And so I have folder started for FPress Brainstorming. And as it was before, it will not be difficult to create a list of things I want to dig deeper into and now have an excuse to do so.

But with my more private writing, I am trying not to think about an audience for this or any other text just now, and have lowered the threshold and will just put it in a public place–like I have done since 2002–and be glad to share the journey with a very few. I have met so many wonderful people over the years, by simply being honest and transparent and interested in knowing myself better, and others, through words and pixels.