INTERESTING TIMES

I'm in my office right now. It's a small room near the door to the apartment, adjacent to a closet which is likely to be our guest bedroom whenever we have a guest. Our new apartment really is at least twice as big as the Crow's Nest. And it is warm. It is the upstairs of a large house, with three of the four corners made into closets. The remaining corner has been made into a kitchen. This office and the main living area are wood paneled. The wood is pleasant and warm. The carpet in the living room is deep green. The bedroom is large. There is a laundry facility in the basement. And best of all, the kitchen has a gas range, and the heat is a gas stove with visible flames and stone for heat retention. There's something wonderful about FIRE in a dark and rainy city. This apartment actually gets and stays warm. That Crow's nest was entirely uninsulated. It was a very chilly place to hang out. We're still in the Brooklyn neighborhood, but we're in a warmer nest, close to the 17 line bus, and on a quieter street. There is no "mom thirty" here, when all the parents arrive to pick up or drop off their babies at the elementary school. We don't miss the desperate moms trying to park, nor the cascades of children on our sidewalk, nor the little man next door who put fish guts in his trash can. So I think the move was worth it. The expenditure is about the same, probably, overall. This rent is $100 more, but utilities and laundry are included.

Signed a lease yesterday morning. And about a dozen other papers. One that says I can be fined $250 if I take the batteries out of the smoke detector. Another that says it's my fault if mold grows in the bathroom. I'll be charged $50/hour for any repairs that need to be done. Basically what I have learned is that a renter in this market has no power. And if I did have any power, I just signed it away. I felt violated after going over all the "agreements" I had to sign to get a place to live. And that doesn't even address what I'm paying for another slummy apartment. This is fucked up. But at least I have a home. Suzanne will be here on Friday and probably Friday night will be the first that I spend at the new place. Move the cat on Friday too.
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OK, so yesterday when my computer got fixed for free, and a few other things worked out to my benefit, I began to think that perhaps "my luck had changed". Only the way I think of it is more that I am cutting loose from a stuck place, moving forward in an energetic way. I think that going to a couple of yoga classes helped bust me loose. And cleaning my place. Washing my sheets and lighting a candle. I think playing the Boob Job Mix loud helped too.
( The Shift )

Last night I couldn't find the kitten. It was the second time she spent a night out. This morning when I went to look for her, I saw the two dominant cats on the block sitting on a sidewalk just across the street from my house. I didn't think much of it until I had made my circle of the block, and back at that spot there was a noise up in the tree. My cat was up in the tree. I guess she'd gone up there to get away from the other two cats. They're ganging up on her.

No wonder she's not happy where she is.
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Shakti is adjusting well. She knows where she lives. Just now she came in from outside and I had my bedroom door closed, and she meowed until I let her in. She has started pawing at the door when she wants out, and because the door is loose, she can make a lot of noise banging it around in the frame. A couple times now Brian has let her out of here, saying that it sounded like she was body slamming the door.
( Cat Stuff )

Probably the biggest holdup on my decision to go to graduate school has been the uncertainty of how I would pay for it. I have lived in fear of the debt, and in the knowledge that our economy is going to continue in a generally downward trend for the rest of my days and beyond. But this experience of moving has been....moving. I am surprised and grateful at all the contributions I have received toward my moving a school expenses. THANK YOU to everyone who contributed in their own small way to help me make this move. It was time.

If you take the feng shui perspective on my relocation from Flagstaff to Portland, I just broke loose a whole lot of "stuck" energy and released it into the universe. The Universe responded by sending lots of energy my way--in precisely the form that I needed it, and that is, money.

So now that I have landed in Portland I find that I have landed in a dump of nasty unconscious bachelor energy. It will take some work, but I will carve my niche of beauty and consciousness out in these surroundings. The raw materials are here. Men more often fail at the most basic level of feng shui, and that is fundamental cleanliness. This room, and especially my tiny little bathroom, were nasty. The bachelor looks at it and says it is clean. So this morning I am cleaning, because no amount of prayer and incense will clean the atmosphere of a place if it is covered in piss and spiderwebs.

There is a beautiful back yard here, but it has become a dumping ground. It will become my yoga space, in time. He put his grill out there and thrown wrappers from meat in a plastic planter, and tarped over unwanted rusting furniture under the porch. There is a yard sale here this coming weekend, and WE are going to participate in it!

There is an upside to this bachelor's lack of care for his homespace. It means that there is little competition for the space. Lisa is the other female housemate, and Brian brags that "her hobby is cleaning". I see why. There has been no conscious woman's touch here in a long time. Once I get my room cleaned and set up, I'll branch out into other parts of the home, brightening it without the resistance that I got from my territorial neighbor in the Barn.

Just a couple hours after Suzanne left, the cat woke up and figured out that she is trapped. I have kept the windows open for her entire lifetime and now they are closed but for a too skinny crack. She's been meowing around the room and keeping me awake since then, so I finally got up. Made egg salad with the hard boiled eggs, cilantro and green onion. Packed up most everything. The next step after this is to get the cat into the cage, and then I can come and go through the doors without her running off. I am sad to restrict her freedom--she is a wild thing at heart. But she is going with me, and knowing this brings joy to my heart.

I have a sad heart too, for leaving all the people here who are special to me. That trite saying about not knowing what you have until it's time to let go of it is still true for me.

First stop is Terry & Terry's house, to get 3 crates of books that I don't have to store, after all. Then I'm driving a 10' Uhaul truck with my truck up on an "auto hauler" behind it toward Salt Lake City. I probably won't make it all the way there today, unless I get a really good nap in. Tomorrow night I hope to be in Boise.

I awoke before dawn from a dream. In the dream I drove my little truck down a steep dirt slope to the river, thinking that there was a less steep way to drive back out. Once down there I found that I could not drive back out with my mere two wheel drive; all the routes back up to the road were steep enough to roll me over endwise. After each attempt my truck would slide all the way into the river and nearly choke off, but I was able to drive it back out of the water. I saw a jeep trying to ford the tributary stream just upstream from the beach where my truck was trapped, and the jeep got swept into the river and stopped just before it was taken downstream.

I was grateful when I awoke far enough to realized that my truck was not really trapped, it was just a dream. I've been awake ever since. The roosters across the Dell started crowing at least an hour before first light. Now we're on 9th or 10th light---the black turned to a glow, then to blue, and the clouds are lit from the bottom now, but the sun is not up yet. The roosters are still going off, more voiciferously than ever. I usually don't hear the roosters---I am usually asleep this time of day.
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Yesterday I was telling a friend about my difficulty finding an inexpensive way to relocate me and my stuff to PDX, and she offered to store some stuff in her shed until the fall. She might even drive up to Portland to visit in the fall--and bring my stuff. WOW--what an offer. Even if she doesn't bring it up to me, it is wonderful just to have a secure place where I can leave a truckload of stuff. I could drive back down here to get it. I didn't want to leave anything in the Barn, because that crazy neighbor of mine would definitely mess with it. My friend's offer lowered my stress level substantially. Deep breath. Now I can go out with a reasonable load in my truck, and find a place once I get there. PHEW.
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I told the man at the post office to wiggle his toes. He had been telling a prior patron that he had pulled a tendon that wrapped around the bottom of his foot, and having just studied anatomy I was guessing at the name of it. "Peroneus?" I said. He didn't know. He'd had his knee scoped twice and the damage to his foot was apparently from standing too much behind the counter at the post office. And being overweight. I told him "stretch them and curl them, stretch and curl" and he looked at me with intent fascination and hope. I felt inspired as if I had actually given him an opportunity to heal, instead of falling perennial victim to the healthcare machine. To awaken the ends of your legs, to invigorate your toes, is to strengthen your entire foundation.
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