Samain                                                                              Closing Moon

The bookcase to my immediate right as I work, the one on which I keep books I refer to often is all but empty. These remain: Wheelock’s Latin Grammar, Anderson, Hill and Lee commentaries on the Metamorphoses, a Loeb’s volume of the Metamorphoses vol. I-VII and a Loeb’s of Caesar’s de Bello Gallico. My computer is still in its usual place, as is the laser jet printer. My desk and its two slanted editing tables are still there, too.

I didn’t get as far in here as I thought I would. Move ennui, a lassitude brought on by too much attention to packing and thoughts of leaving, enveloped me. So I stopped. Still, some progress was made today and I don’t feel the active resistance I did when I made the Whining post.

Here in these pages is a continuous record of the move from its earliest notion to its detailed enactment. Banal to the world at large no doubt but for me and for mine a testament to how we made a major life decision and took action to see it through.

Samain                                                                               Closing Moon

One half of my study, all the books and the bookshelves and the art, all packed or stacked. Tomorrow the half closest to my daily work space gets attention. Both Kate and I have a problem now, a similar one. We need to get everything packed up and ready to go. Yes, we do.

But there are elements to our daily lives, her Bernina, the table on which she cuts and layouts out her projects, the ironing board; my computer, the books I use for my Latin, the usb connected accessories that take in the data from my workouts and my sleep that we will want even up to the day we move.

We’ll each have to work that out in our own way. These problems are evidence though of time beginning to grow short. So they are problems of our choosing and ones that show the progress we’ve made.

Samain                                                                              Closing Moon

Spent the morning in a weird activity. Deconstructing my office. For over 15 years the bookshelves, desk, and computer furniture in this space have supported my idiosyncratic path through the world of the mind. Now half of the room is almost bare, shorn of shelves and their supporting structure. A plastic baggie has two inch metal pegs that hold up the shelves. The shelves themselves, in various sizes, and the the wooden posts that contain the holes for the pegs line up now along the back wall, arranged by size.

It feels like I’m eating my own feet, sort of chomping through my own body from the ground up. And it feels just as unsustainable as this implies. What will I do when all the books and shelves and files and papers are in boxes? What will I do when the computer is unplugged and stowed in its own container? Then, I’ll be cut loose from the mechanical and pulpy tools that have been my workaday world.

It might be liberating for a while, but for good? No. Perhaps these will be the first presents I open on Christmas.

Samain                                                                             Closing Moon

Back to packing this morning, but the heart’s not in it. It’s not a reluctance to move on, not at all. Rather, it’s a weariness, evident today. Push, push, push. Out to Colorado, home, out to Colorado. Home. Now confused about location of home. The task seems impossible, even though I know it isn’t. We’re 85% packed and the movers will do at least half of the remaining packing. Just. Tired. Of it.

Not surprised I feel this way. And, I’m ok with it. I just hope it doesn’t last. Gonna be tough to move us if we’re not ready.

Samain                                                                          Closing Moon

A few shots from my recent trip to Colorado. Not sure what happened to the one of the three mule deer bucks looking at me in our new backyard. They let me get very close.

Samain                                                                             Closing Moon

A snow quiet afternoon. A pause, an interlude between stronger bursts, then the second   helping, a large white scoop to fill out the rest of the dish. Yesterday it was fall. Today, it’s January. Whiplash.

We worked hard over the last month or so at outside tasks emptying the sheds, harvesting, then fertilizing and mulching the vegetables, the same around the base of the fruit trees, cutting back the perennials, having a contractor prune and mulch, scrape away the dog’s many holes. We put up fence to protect the scraped over areas to prevent new holes until a snow. I repaired a hole dug near the firepit. We moved bee woodenware and other accessories into the garage. I removed the angel weathervane from the honey house and the Davis weather station from its post in the east section of prairie grass.

This is not so much a downsizing, though there is that element to our move, as it is a compression, a reducing of the outside work load. Our interior space will be smaller, somewhat, but very differently organized. I’ll be up in the air overlooking Black Mountain while Kate will sew and quilt in a former two bay garage. Our reading area will be our reading chairs facing a wood fireplace while the tv will be downstairs, outside our bedroom. The laundry room is down there, too, all just five steps from the main level.

Kate’s space is behind the double windows on the right of the house and mine is above the garage to the far right.