Monthly Archives: December 2014

Art and Culture, Music

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Samain                                                                             Moving Moon

Kate and I just got back from a baroque/early music concert in St. Paul at the Baroque Room. After Bach’s Orchestral Suite Nr. 2 in B Minor, I leaned over to her and said, “Would you like to get coffee afterward at the St. Paul Hotel?”

That was my question the last St. Paul Chamber Orchestra concert of March in 1988. I’d waited the entire season to ask her out and almost didn’t even then. After that, we dated, then in 1990 got married not far from the Ordway Theater where we had met. The St. Paul Landmark center is just across Rice Park.

Chamber Music, the sort which the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra has made its repertoire, was originally just that, music played in a chamber, or room. The Baroque Room is a small chamber in which the Flying Forms, a Baroque ensemble, play and invite others in to play. They manage the room and the concert series there. I recommend it. The experience is intimate, just like chamber music was meant to be.

While writing this, I began to wonder where I first encountered chamber music. I think it must have been through a wonderful program that was in place while I was in seminary. It offered coupons for very cheap season tickets to the Guthrie, the Minnesota Orchestra and, I imagine, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.

When I first started going to the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, they were directed by Dennis Russell Davies and played in the O’Shaughnessy Auditorium on the campus of St. Catharine’s college in St. Paul. Something in early music, baroque music and classical music speaks to my soul. I’m not literate enough musically to know what it is, but when I hear Bach or Mozart, Haydn, Purcell, Telemann a mode of transport occurs that carries me into another time and into a more serene and gentle world.

Realized today that I miss it. Kate and I stopped going some time ago. The evening drives, the 8 pm start time, the soft lights and warmth made the concerts sleep inducing. An affront to the music and to ourselves. 20 years or so I went, often weekly during the season, so this music was a major part of my life for a very long time.

Gonna spend some money in Colorado and get our sound system up and working so we can listen at home. We’ve not done much of that at all.

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Samain                                                                               Moving Moon

The full moving moon shone through the bare basswood, oak, ironwood and black locust last night. Bare trees in winter will be missing on Black Mountain, with the exception of a handful of aspen. The montane eco-system has conifers, whose strategy is to conserve water through tiny needles all year rather than exposing broad leaves during the growing season. The view out our bedroom window will not change as it does here.

 

 

General

Down to These

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Samain                                                                              Moving Moon

It’s down to these kind of thoughts. We won’t finish Midsomer Murders in Minnesota. Too many seasons left to go. That tube of toothpaste? Nope. It will get packed. The mouthwash though. Fini.

Small things to  mark the time which has now moved to under two weeks. We’re both excited. We’re both tired of preparation and are ready to go. Even though, of course, there is still some preparation left. Ah. Well.

Feelings, The Move

Act

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Samain                                                                                     Moving Moon

Spent some time packing this morning. Not astonishing. I decided to start at the west wall of the basement and work my way east, packing my way to the garden study. This way, when I finish this time, I will be finished.

This action, rather than thinking about acting or about the need to act or about the things that might go wrong if I don’t act, further relieved my anxiety.

A certain low level of anxiety hangs around the hallways of my psyche pegged to minor things of which I am aware, yet have not engaged. In this case they are the items I’ve not packed, most small or clumsy. My goal now is to strip those things from the hallways and out of my need to attend to them at all.

I don’t know whether this strategy will achieve inner peace for me, but it should end up with everything in a box or ready for the movers to pack.

 

Feelings

Panic Subsided

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Samain                                                                             Moving Moon

kate and me in timeBusiness meeting at Keys. Money’s on track. We have plenty of time to get things done. My anxiety level returned to normal after our time together. Normal means low to none, even for me. My anxiety disorder is situational, not triggered constantly. Given the stress levels associated with moves I’d say my anxiety has been about what I could expect.

This shared time together, focused on the pragmatics of our common life, schedule, money, how we’re feeling, has become a necessary and substantial part of our life. It allows us to deal with potential problems before they get big and to prevent most of them altogether. Thanks, Ruth.

Colorado, The Move

Like Water Circling a Drain

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Samain                                                                            Moving Moon

Finding emotions cycling faster as the time here gets shorter. As Frank Broderick put it in a phone call yesterday, time here circles like water down a drain, getting smaller and smaller as the days disappear.Yesterday I felt delight, this morning, early, a nascent panic. God, do we have time to get everything done?

Last evening the treadmill mysteriously quit working. This is a Landice and I have a lifetime warranty on it; the parts cost is not an issue though there can be a substantial labor charge. The question is, can it get fixed before the movers load it on the truck? I’ll find out today.

Filling out papers for the sale of the house. Stuff we could have done a while back but didn’t realize we had. Disclosure forms, things like that.

Based on my anxiety over the last few months and the number of dire events that have not happened you might think I would be calmer now, use experience to tamp down the nervous tics. But no. Not the way this ornery critter of the psyche works. It just wipes off its forehead, says whew, escaped that one, then moves on. The future has enough branches that plenty of things might happen.

Kate had an emotional last quilting session yesterday. Her sewing group made clear how much they would miss her. Not to mention that today the grand piano moves on to a new home. We were surprised to learn, quite some time ago now, that it was worth less than nothing. It would not fit in the new house and it’s too big for Jon and Jen’s.

Kate gifted it to a senior citizen we know well. She plays, but got rid of her piano when they moved into their town house. Now she’ll have a piano on which to practice again. The changes have begun to come faster now. The piano movers, for example, are here right now at 7:15.

 

 

Colorado, Great Wheel, Holidays, The Move

We’ll Be Home For the Solstice

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Samain                                                                             Moving Moon

Closed on Samain and at home for the first full day and night on the Winter Solstice. On my sacred calendar the days and nights could not have lined up better. The Winter Solstice this year is on a new moon, an excellent time for beginnings. The new moon will make even darker that deepest night of the year.

We purchased our new home at the beginning of the Celtic New Year, the time when the fallow season begins. Our first full day and night together in the new house will come at the moment when the night is longest, when dark has triumphed over light as completely as it can. Then, as we become more and more settled on Shadow Mountain, the light will gradually increase.

The new moon, the Winter Moon, will grow and become full in the first weeks of our moving in. Blessed be.

Art and Culture, Feelings, Friends, Woolly Mammoths

Grief and Delight

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Samain                                                                                Moving Moon

Antra, me, Wendy, Joy, Allison
Antra, me, Wendy, Joy, Allison

Over the past seven and a half months we have lived with loss: friends, memories, arts and cultural opportunities, our home, even the belongings we have jettisoned. Our decision to move opened deep fissures in our day to day reality.

A turning point in this experience of loss came when Kate found our new home on Black Mountain Drive. At last we had a concrete spot, a place toward which our work aimed. Until then the consequences of our decision weighted toward grief, even though the decision itself was about joy and adventure.

This is, for me at least, a deep learning. That is, choices we make will often (always?) lead us away from as well as towards. When we move away from, we leave behind relationships, places, things and there is grief with each loss. This is not negative, just true. And grief is not bad, it reflects the bonds formed and now sundered. Grief readjusts our psyche to a life without whatever it was we left behind.

Now that the packing is almost done and the leaving Minnesota day is just two weeks photoRaway, my heart has begun to turn to Colorado and our new life. I’m feeling a sense of release from my life here, a release made easier by gentle leave takings, by having enough time to say farewells. There is a delight made more delicate and precious by knowing I can leave without regret.

Again, thank you to all who read this: especially the fellow docents: Tom, Allison, Jane, Morry, Sally, Bill, Vicki, Joanne, Kathleen, Lisa, Marcia, Joy, Mary, Antra, Cheryl, Florence, Ginny, Sharon, Carreen, Wendy,  the Woollies: Tom, Mark, Bill, Frank, Stefan, Scott, Warren, and the sheepshead guys: Roy, Bill, Dick and Ed. You have made leaving a source of nurture and grief the solace it is meant to be.

 

Colorado, Family, Feelings, Friends, The Move, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

The 25th Is the New 50th

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Samain                                                                               Moving Moon

The electrician comes today to remove the automatic transfer switch for our generator. Eric at Alpha Electric in Evergreen said they can cost as much as $1,000 to $1,200. Probably saved us the cost of the electrician today and the cost of installing the generator in Colorado.

While we decided to leave the Viking in place (so we can install an induction cooking surface in Colorado), we did decide to take the freezer with us. One less thing to buy out there.

At the Woolly restaurant meeting on Monday Stefan said, “I know you’re focused on logistics right now, but this is a big life change.” He’s right, in a way. The logistics have absorbed, helpfully, a lot of the angst. We could put our worry hats on about things we could resolve like choosing a mover, what to take and what to unload, when to buy a new home.

The larger question of whether this is a good decision or not, oddly, doesn’t really matter. We made the choice to go and accepted the consequences, positive and negative, of that choice. There’s little we can do now to effect that. As a result, the time between deciding for Colorado and now has been filled with making that choice a reality.

We gave ourselves long enough to say our good-byes and that has been a very nurturing, even healing process. It means that when we start our new life in Colorado it will not be with regrets about Minnesota, but with warm memories.

The new life will depend on us and our choices, too. We’re going open to a new place, to new friends, to stronger family relationships.  And, we’re looking forward to being with each other in a different environment. Our first anniversary in Colorado will be our 25th and for those of us of the divorce generation, the 25th is the new 50th.

 

Colorado, Holidays, Mountains, The Move

What We’re Getting For Christmas

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Samain                                                                                Moving Moon

It’s quiet. Thankfully. Some guys are running cable along the utility easement on our property and the dogs don’t like that. At all. Lots of warning, warning, warning barks. Lots.

Kate got yet another load of boxes. How many she’s gotten over the course of the last few months I don’t know. A large number. Gives me hope for the AA chapters up here. She also got a barrier for the front seats to prevent the dogs from climbing up for a better view. There’s definitely something better about sitting where the humans are sitting.

It’s like Christmas is coming only in the form of an A1 moving van. If the driver’s a rotund guy in red with ermine trim, I’ll know holiseason has come on full strength.

We’re getting a new life for the holidays. Just what we wanted!