Category Archives: The Move

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

Between

June 17, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

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

June 17, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

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

June 14, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

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.

June 13, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

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.

Colorado, The Move

Editing

June 12, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Summer Moon

Boxes have begun to pile up. Some with yellow tape. Not sure yet. Most right now with red tape. Sell. A few with green tape. Move. As the months progress the green boxes will out number the red ones as we “edit” our belongings. Edit is a real estate term for cleaning all the junk out of the house before you try to sell it.

We’ll have SortTossPack come the last week of June to help clear out the garage, take our bedroom furniture except for the bed, the furniture in the guest room, again with the exception of the bed. By then we’ll also have numerous boxes of books and curios, dvds and such. I’m hopeful sometime in that time frame the Vectra, the leg press, the long arm quilter and the riding lawnmower have gone on to other homes where they will be used.

We meet with the last realtor to interview next Tuesday, the day after we meet with our financial consultant. On Tuesday Anne, Kate’s sister, helped us begin what will be a larger editing of our landscape. Mostly pruning, but some new plantings as well. On that day, too, I cut away the yew over the boulder wall.

All this work, small chunks at a time, has taken the edge off the move for me, made it something now, rather than later. We are, so far, making the move a pleasant experience, one with enough time to accomplish. May it be so going forward, too.

Dogs, Family, Garden, Latin, The Move, Translating Metamorphoses

Spray, Translate, Box

June 11, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Summer Moon

Sprayed the orchard again. I’m going to have this down by the end of the season with two a weeks in the orchard and once a week in the veggie garden. The rain and the International Ag Labs program (+ plus Bill Schmidt’s super juice that I applied last fall) have combined to give much of our garden big boosts. The collard greens, egg plants, cucumbers, beans, sugar snap peas, chard, beets, garlic and carrots have all exceeded their usual growth by this time of year. The tomatoes and peppers have been slowed down by the cooler weather and we’ve lost one of each. The onions don’t look bad, but they don’t look great either.

Got back on that equus. The next few verses after those that threw me were also tricky, but with the commentary I got through them. That felt very good.

Kate came up with an excellent idea, pack two boxes a day. If we each do it, that’s 28 boxes a week. And, in just two decades at that rate we’ll be ready to go. No, much earlier than that. By next spring, lord willin and the creek don’t rise.

Today I boxed up DVDs and surprised myself by finding several that I want to take along. More, though, thank god, that I could let go.

Mission crew commander Buckman-Ellis tells me that it’s looking bad for Kep coming to join him in Korea. The housing situation there is dormitory style until the dorms fill up, then you can go off base and, presumably, have a dog. That is, however, if the dorms fill up.

Fine with us. Kep has fit in with the locals.

Colorado, The Move

A Glacier Near Home

June 10, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Summer Moon

Blue sky smiling at me. Dewpoint floating below 50. A temperature in the high 70’s. Northern summer day with white cumulus tumbling through the sky, looking for a tip to queue.

Jon sent us some information about St. Mary’s Glacier, Colorado, population 200+. It has its own glacier and most of the area is at 11,500 feet. The property prices look good and it’s only 30 minutes from Denver in Clear Creek County, north of I-70 around Idaho Springs. Just did a broadband map lookup and it has broadband.

A main draw of Colorado is the chance for extended time in the mountains and living among them would be wonderful. Can you imagine having a glacier in your town? How cool would that be?

The Move, Third Phase

Cutting Back

June 10, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Summer Moon

Dug out a yew that created a beautiful blue-green pattern against our east facing boulder wall. 15 years ago. Since then, cruel winter sun bounced back from the yard as the sun rose burned it, then burned it again and again. The blue-green became conifer death bronze mixed with blue-green. Might sound interesting on paper, but it’s not.

The yew will not be the only long term planting here to get excised or significantly reshaped this year. Like not getting a haircut on the day of the job interview, preparing our front landscape is better done now, so some of it can grow out, look natural. We want to land that job. Yes we do.

Continues to feel strange while I work in the garden beds, among the orchard’s trees and shrubs knowing that perhaps by this time next year, I will no longer be responsible for them. Wendell Berry had been my lodestar, taking over a family farm, staying on it, learning it, working it for the future, not the present only. Now it’s clear that I am what I really always was, a temporary custodian.

We have done right by the land here. Soil amendments with organic matter like manure, compost, top soil mixed with the natural Great Anoka Sand Plain to create healthy, productive perennial beds, vegetable beds and orchard. We planted for the long term when we bought the house in 1994, using a landscape architect from Otten Brothers and laying in river birch, amur maple, a bur oak, spruce and Norwegian pine. We put in several boulder walls and created a three-tiered perennial garden with a brick patio in its midst, just off glass doors leading into a bedroom sized space I used as a study for a long time.

Over the next couple of years we amended the soil even more than Otten Brothers had done in all the flower beds. Jon and I cut down the black locust trees that dotted the area occupied now by the orchard and the vegetable garden. We chipped the trees and used them for mulch. Jon built raised beds and they’re still in use. The orchard came later, but began to bear fruit three years ago and had an excellent year last year.

With the exception of the sheds and the fire pit we’ve largely left the woods alone, letting them be habitat for wild critters and a place for our dogs to roam.

We raised bees here as Artemis Honey. Our pantry downstairs has honey from our hives, canned vegetables from many years in clear jars. There is there, too, a wooden tray system for onions, garlic, apples and pears. It’s empty because those pantry residents go first as we eat through the year’s crops. Some of it is frozen, greens for example, ground cherry and raspberry pies, chicken-leek pies. We just had a chicken-leek pie yesterday for lunch.

This will be the third year of the International Ag Labs program aimed at growing optimal crops of healthy food while improving the soil rather than depleting it. We also have permaculture touches like plant guilds, an herb spiral, a suntrap, flowers planted among the vegetables.

All this might be overwhelming to a potential buyer, but I have plant lists, soil tests, names of suppliers and assistants. We will also have photographs of our property throughout the year since this kind of work goes on all during the growing season, typically from late March through the middle of October.

It is my hope that whoever buys this property will love the land and its potential. They won’t do just what we did, but horticulture is a flexible art, open to the values and desires of many sorts of people.

Colorado, The Move

I Love A Parade

June 9, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Summer Moon

The Parade of Realtors is two thirds finished. The one today offered a much better number than our first one, while at the same time being more professional and believable. That’s a winning combination for me. She’s a friend of Kate’s and mother to a long time friend of Jon’s. We have one more Realtor to meet, then we’ll choose and begin to do what they think we need to do to sell our house next spring at the best possible price.

Of course, between here and there is a path lined with a lot of cardboard and sweat equity, not to mention real estate perusal in Colorado. Next Monday we meet with our financial planner and will discuss with him how much if any capital it might make sense to withdraw to support our purchase. That and a number we anticipate from the sale of this house will define the parameters of our search.

Since making the decision a little over a month ago, we’ve made concrete step after concrete step, each one headed west toward the Rockies. And each one makes a bit more excited. Living in the move, instead of Minnesota or Colorado, has let me go with the process as it flows, allowing my daily actions to flow with it, rather than struggling against difficulties. So far that seems to be working fine.

Garden, Latin, The Move

A Morning

June 9, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Summer Moon

Mulching a hosta bed, a bed of grasses, some newly planted begonias and a few perennials. The cooler air, 63 degrees, made the task pleasurable.

When finished, to the Latin. Ay, carumba! Just as I patted myself on the back for having made strides almost long enough to work on my own, five verses came up that were almost as opaque as if they had been written on black paper. That was Friday. Today I hoped a layoff might have filtered them into easier chunks. It does sometimes happen that way for me. Nope.

At that point I found some empty boxes and began filling them with books. I got a good ways along, filling up three boxes, hard cover fiction, paperpback fiction and a box I’ve started for Margaret Levin. She likes fantasy and science fiction.

In both the Latin and the packing I did encounter an obstacle and it’s one I encounter when the dogs dig under fences and dig up garden beds. A sort of weariness comes over me, a sense that I’ve done this work before and now I have to do it again. And then again. And then again. This feeling saps me of resolve and short circuits decision making so that translation and choosing books to discard become seemingly impossible tasks. This is not, I imagine, peculiar to me, but when it hits, it slows whatever I’m doing down. A lot.

It will pass and the tasks will become easier and more tractable.