Yesterday the internet was connected, with some effort and a very tall technician from Argentina. Originally from Argentina, I mean – it would be silly to send someone so far, literally, to connect FiOS. 🙂 I found his exotic accent pleasant.
This morning I found my internet connection… wasn’t. 😦 Funny how little stress that ever really causes me, and I find myself wondering if that is a byproduct of having once worked technical support for a connectivity provider in my very first call center job… 18 years ago. I ponder the passage of time and sip my coffee while I power cycle the router and restore my connection to the world. It’s a simple thing, each moment of self-sufficiency in life is another opportunity to chill, to be content, to feel safe. There is something so powerful in self-reliance – without it, what do I have to offer the world reciprocally? There’s something there to think over… maybe another time.
Another day dawns, and change is.
My desk here is next to a window looking out on the park, and positioned very near to the corner of the unit – and the building – and the sound of rain on the eaves this morning is loud enough to hear very clearly. I go with the stillness and the sound of rainfall this morning, adding only the percussion of fingers on keys. At one point, I find myself ‘feeling it’ almost as music, tapping my toes along with the sounds of morning. Smiling at myself when I notice, it is a moment of pure pointless joy without reason or excuse required. This room feels good for writing, for painting… it is the ‘master bedroom’ no longer. This is my studio. 🙂
I feel pretty settled in and ‘at home’ here already, which is such a different experience for me – is it really just that I slowed it down and moved in more completely while I was moving out, sparing myself weeks of upheaval and disarray? Is it that I did so much of it entirely myself? I grin thinking about the thousands of pounds of goods I moved, and the legion of tiny bruises from bumping this thing, bracing that thing, hauling some awkward bit over here, or over there; I got it done as planned, almost precisely. There’s a strange delight in seeing things unfold as planned. I think briefly of another experience – not the ‘unplanned disaster’ or the ‘unplanned but awesome’ experiences, instead I think for just a moment of the ‘carefully planned experience that becomes completely derailed, fully failed, no effective alternative, shit just going sideways on every detail full on panic’ experience… scary. I realize as my mind veers away from the sense of that experience how very frightening I find it, and far more so than the outcome of anything unplanned. I use the moment to consider how I can better appreciate qualities of the unplanned experiences in life to ease the stress of failed planning in other moments; instead of feeling the pain and fear of the planning going to pieces in some horrible way, learning to take a needed step back, a few deep breaths, and take the opportunity to let go comfortably, to go ‘off script’ in those moments, and let it become unplanned at that point – instead of fervently holding on to the failed planning, grieving the discomfort or turmoil of the changing situation, instead learning to embrace it as a chance to do something wholly new and previously unconsidered – or to find the value in what had been rejected before. I make some notes – real pen and ink on paper notes – to consider this further, later.
Yeah…but still some work to do.
I pause to make another cup of coffee and return to my desk. I’m very aware this morning, as I sit in this one room that is not yet ‘totally moved in’, that my moving in is not yet completed; this is the one space in which that is quite obvious. There are books stacked everywhere, strange vaguely lop-sided towers of books in varying sizes that show off both some skill at balancing objects, and also some lack of good judgement. Almost on cue, a precarious stack of books topples over. I wonder that I didn’t notice that I’d brushed it on the way by, or somehow shifted it. I laugh, because it’s not as if they’ll be damaged. I feel a moment of appreciation that these were not my first editions (which are already put on shelves) and recall a conversation with someone who asked me ‘why is it a big deal if a book is a first edition?’ It isn’t of course, and that was my answer; it’s merely an unnecessary way of making a book seem special, or ‘collectible’. The words within are truly enough.
Speaking of words… On the other hand, let’s not. At least, not this morning. I do have words and language on my mind lately. Thoughts to think over about how I communicate, why it matters to feel heard, and what it says to me when someone silences me – certainly, I am a studied expert on what I understand it to mean when I am silenced. It’s likely both an experience that is specifically part of who I am myself and how I take the world’s messaging, and also probably very common and very human.
The rain keeps falling. I’ve run out of things to say. The stacks of books, and a couple of small boxes of ‘desk stuff’ that are not yet unpacked now have my attention. I’ve some time before I head to work… and it is a lovely morning to live beautifully and take care of me. I think I’ll do some of that. 🙂
I haven’t even left for work, and I am already eager to return home.
Today is a good day to be here in this moment, now. I’ll be getting on with that…
Evening Light 