Category Archives: The Move

Colorado, Garden, The Move, Writing

New Feelings

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Summer                                                                       Summer Moon

New feeling today. Got outside and moved some mulch into place, took some prunings back to the fire-pit for use during bonfires. It was hot since I got up late, making up for lost sleep yesterday. So I came inside to work.

Under the usual circumstances I would have done some Latin, then moved on to other tasks, perhaps starting the book about our life here. But as I sat down, I had this restless feeling (not unusual for me) and it led me to the bookshelves in the exercise area.

Soon I had books about the civil war in my hands, then in boxes. Green tape. Many books about old travels, a 1985 Guide to Living In Washington, D.C., a similarly aged guidebook to Mt. Vernon and Monticello. Books about Savannah, Charleston, the Piedmont, the Coastal Lands of the south. Red tape. Then, Willa Cather novels, Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Richard Ford. Green tape. More boxes. Affluenza. Crocks of Gold. Medieval Village Life. Town and Country in the Middle Ages. Calvin’s Institutes. The Future of Religion. Red tape.

Clearing out the six bookshelves that form an L in the area where I work out has become important to me, important to finish before Thursday when the SortTossPack folks come with their truck and their crew. That was the new feeling. An aspect of the move had some urgency in my mind. Living in the move has become my home. This is different than methodically knocking down visits to financial counselors, interviewing real estate agents, or dismantling the dog feeding stalls.

This work took priority for me this afternoon.

When I finished, around 4 pm or so, I came into the office, sat down and wrote 1,000 words of what I’m provisionally calling: Seven Oaks and Artemis Honey.

 

Anoka County, Family, Garden, Great Work, Memories, Minnesota, Our Land and Home, Retirement, Sierra Club, The Move, Third Phase, Writing

A House With A History

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Summer                                                         Summer Moon

IMAG0531Why not write a history of this spot, this hectare? An ecological history. It can start with the glaciations, consider the flora and fauna since then, focusing in more tightly once the first nations began to arrive, then even more tightly as Minnesota began to emerge.

Another starting spot would be today, or from Kate and mine’s presence here. How we decided to be here, why. Go over decisions we made early on like hiring a landscape designer at the beginning. Recount our twenty years, the good decisions and the bad ones, the easy ones and the hard ones. The other historical and geological material could be worked in as backstory.

It would be good for people to view an average approach to the land, one which changed over time (though its roots were indeed in the back to the land movement) and which took advantage not of a particular approach, but of many. An approach that is dynamic, 06 27 10_beekeeperastronautchanging with new knowledge, the seasons, aging, new plants and new desire.

The flavor of “Return of the Secaucus 7” with some Scott and Helen Nearing, Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry thrown in, too. Ah, perhaps it could be a sort of third phase update of the movement years, an upper middle class idyll moving against the grain of upper middle class lifestyles.

Not sure whether to pursue this or not, but it could be interesting. Might even help sell the house. A house with a history.

A structure based on the Great Wheel might be interesting.

Colorado, The Move

Arts and Crafts Moving Tips

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Summer                                                            Summer Moon

William Morris has proved helpful as I make decisions about what to move to Colorado and what we want to sell or donate. His principle, have nothing in your home which is not beautiful or useful, sound on its own in my opinion (and one I’ve honored in the breach for the most part), makes wonderful sense when sorting through, say, crystal.

If it’s elegant, graceful, clean, it goes in a box with green tape. If it was bought in a momentary enthusiasm or received as a well intended gift, red tape. Or, yellow, if we keep it for a possible garage sale. Prints, photographs, paintings will get sorted in the same way. DVD’s and books, too, for that matter. Furniture? Yes. Kitchenware? You bet. Gardening tools? Yep. Beautiful? Green tape. Nice? Red tape.

There is a category, though, that Morris doesn’t address that also has its green tape items. That groundhog headpiece that belonged to Dad? Beautiful? No. Useful? No. Memorable? Outta the park. Yes, sentimentalism will have its own share of boxes, though they will be far fewer than in times past. And, if it were possible, even the sentimental things would be either beautiful or useful, too.

Colorado, The Move

Little Boxes

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Beltane                                                            Summer Moon

One bookshelf of DVD’s sorted into red (go), green (move). Boxes piling up. We’ll need the Sort Toss Pack folks next Friday or we’ll need a second house for the contents of this one. Hey, Warren! (a friend known for the number of homes he either wholly or partially owned)

The process of getting ready to move, living the move as I think of it, has been good for our relationship and it was already excellent. The process of unstripping one identity and its physical trappings and creating a new identity in a new place has a surprising amount of vulnerability attached. The familiar no longer soothes in quite the same way as it used to. The ease of doing our banking, visiting a pharmacy and going out for  lunch, all of which we did today, will require thought and planning a year from now. A little thing, yes, but add up the little things and they become big.

But, we are doing this together, removing our Minnesota identities while getting ready to put on Colorado ones. Of course there will be continuities, even Minnesota constants, but all will be changed. In the process our relationship is the main constant, the stable spot, yet even it will change, is changing, has been changed. This is what brings us closer together, the journey, one of our own choosing. We have made this decision and bear the consequences as well as the potentials.

Aging, Colorado, Friends, Humanities, Politics, Sierra Club, The Move, Third Phase

Young

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Beltane                                                               Summer Moon

How do they get so young? Had my meeting with the organizer for the Franken campaign. She graduated this spring from American University. 20 years old if that. She wanted to know how I got involved in politics. So I told her my story, watching the Stevenson-Eisenhower returns in 1952. She was born in 1994 or 1993. The time difference would be the same for me for an event in 1906/1907. Hmmm.

We chatted for about 45 minutes. She was energetic, hopeful, trying to be realistic and tough, yet still eager. A hard combination to pull off. She’ll get there though, I imagine.

The interaction taught me something. Probably something I’ve learned several times, but I’m learning it again. It was fun and revitalizing to meet someone new, to talk about stuff I care about, to get out of the house in the evening.

One real downside of living up here all these years, with few places where folks just go to hangout (none, really) and with no folks to go hangout with anyhow, is the tendency to get in a rut. Stay home, watch tv in the evening. I love Kate and watching tv, winding down in the evening, is a pleasant and even important part of our time together. Our lives during the day have the garden or sewing or writing or Latin or the dogs, never boring, fulfilling.

But. What I’m reminded of is the need to engage others, new folks, on a regular basis. When we move to Colorado, I’ll see to it. Politics. Art. Gardening. It does highlight a criteria for our new home (a favorite parlor game for us these days. Oh, and it should have…) I came up with a couple of weeks ago. A community where we want to be.

Andover’s not bad, it’s just not much at all. And politically it’s very conservative. Political leanings are not everything, of course not, but they do speak to a wider range of compatibility and I’d like to have at least some of that where we live next.

Colorado, The Move

Realtor Reality Show

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Beltane                                                                    Summer Moon

Third realtor interview today. A guy from Ramsey (another ‘burb connected to us to the northwest) who left large real estate companies to found his own. A thoughtful guy with a sound approach and a 5.5% fee. A possibility. It will be a while before he gets back to us, week after next due to a vacation that starts tomorrow. I’m especially interested in his valuation since he understands this market and has sold real estate for 28 years.

Not sure why but I find this process enervating. It doesn’t feel productive to me, even though it’s very important to the success of our move. Or, maybe, it’s just today. Once we’ve selected a realtor things will start moving, though still at a pace we can maintain since next March remains the date for putting the place on the market.

 

 

Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., The Move, Third Phase

Between

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Beltane                                                                            Summer Moon

Janus. The two faced god, one face looking to the past, the other toward the future. Hence, January. “…the god of beginnings and transitions,[1] and thereby of gates, doors, passages, endings and time.” Wiki  The door to Janus’ temple stood open during war and closed to indicate peace.

Got to thinking about Janus this morning in light of  Bill Schmidt’s comment about liminal spaces. Janus is presented as the god of liminality, of the time between war and peace, beginning and ending, inside and outside. But. As I thought about the image of Janus, he looks back into the past where lie regrets and failures and loss. At the same time he looks into the future where there is anxiety and hope and maybe despair. The one thing he is not is the god of liminal spaces. No, he’s the god of regret and worry. That thing that he cannot do is see the present, be in the now, for he is eternally fixated on the flow of time past or the onrush of time future.

More. As Bill suggested, to live is to be in liminality, between life and death, yesterday and tomorrow, this project and the next one. We can define, interestingly, liminality as the now since the now we inhabit has a position after a moment and before the next one.

The Celts reserved a special place for the liminal, seeing it as a magical time. So Celtic magic often happened at dawn or as evening fell. But in the understanding I’m presenting we can work our magic in the liminal space we inhabit. Right now. This is not an idle metaphor, but an expression of the magical reality of the now, of inhabiting liminal space always.

Whatever it is, we can bear it for this moment. At least for this moment. We may not have been able to bear it a moment ago and we don’t know whether we will be able to bear it in moment, but, right now, in this fleeting doorway where we stand poised between then and the future, right now, we can marshal our resources and get through the moment. With practice our capacity to live in this space between becomes usual, ordinary and we know in our body that regret is gone, in the past, and that anxiety is of the future, not yet.

As Stewart Brand puts it so nicely, we live in the long now.

 

Colorado, Politics, The Move

Tuesday, Tuesday

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Beltane                                                                           Summer Moon

Last realtor interview today. More packing. Some mulching.

I do have an odd meeting tonight. A young woman (just graduated from American University) working as an organizer up here for Al Franken wants to meet and listen to my story. Translation: she wants money and work from me. I told her though neither were likely since I volunteer with the Sierra Club, that I do support Al.

When I told her that I knew Paul Wellstone, it was as if I’d said I knew Jesus personally. (who come to think of it, was Jewish, too) Oh, my. Well, I’d like to hear about that. And you’ve done organizing, too! So we’re having coffee at a local Caribou.

 

Colorado, Family, The Move

Move Proud

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Beltane                                                                               Summer Moon

At our business meeting we look at cash flow, reserves, upcoming expenditures. We check our calendars and discuss mutual work like the garden, the orchard and now the move. We set some time aside next Friday for combing through items to send on to the SortTossPack consignment store. These meetings, first recommended by Ruth, a financial counselor, have become a key part of our marriage, about mutuality and forward thinking.

Kate’s clearing through the upstairs like a horde of locusts, sweeping everything before her. My movement through books and DVD’s has gone at a slower pace, but at a pace that will still see me done sometime this summer. Done, that is, with packing that which will be sold or donated. I will make, too, a good deal of progress on books and files that will be moved. Of course, some of the books will remain on the shelves because they are in current use.

We’re proud of ourselves because we’ve taken the move from idea to living reality in a matter of six weeks or so. A lot has gotten done already. And even more remains to be done. This house will be in the spring market for 2015, probably around March.

Colorado, The Move

Red Tape.

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Beltane                                                                    Summer Moon

We have actual red tape. It goes on stuff that’s leaving the house before we do. Boxes, right now, of DVDs and books. Other things will follow. So in this case red tape means freeing up room for the green tape. That’s the stuff that will leave with us for Colorado. And the yellow tape means we’re not sure quite yet.

Surprised myself today when sorting DVDs at how many I want to keep. Probably not rational since most movies are available somewhere for streaming. Movies by favorite directors like Weir, Wender, Anderson, Bergman and movie houses like Hammer, classics from Criterion or other art house companies, plus the stuff of my youth like the Mummy, Frankenstein and Dracula are all in the green tape box. A weird comfort, as with many of my book categories, knowing I can reach for one whenever I need it.

There will be many decisions like these. We have asked the SortTossPack folks to come the last week of June to move things out of the garage, take the furniture to the consignment shop and a first load of books and dvds to half-price books.