Sitting on Karrie Sue's porch, faithful Burb Dawg by my side, The Boy still curled up under a quilt in the living room, I'm thinking of something The Editor said to me a few days ago.
"How does it feel to be homeless?" His grin conveyed that the question was a verbal tickle.
I was so thoroughly exhausted and still laden with a task list longer than my arm that I couldn't feel a thing. This morning, after having finally packed up and hauled my house-full to store at the edge of Swamp City, secured a rental abode deep in the heart of the swamp, and driven said Editor back to his Jeep at Karrie Sue's... I am feeling again.
Dawn's first rays brought tears about my lovely London mornings -- cool, dry breezes, songbirds and wind chimes, and little else. The previous day's assaultive heat washed away. It's not unlike all that here at Karrie Sue's, save for the higher temps and humidity, and it's the similarity that brought it all back to me. So I let myself go there a bit.
After a painful Sun salute (my first after several days of hefty lifting and long-haul driving), I meditated on my hostess's east-facing, wood-floored porch with a cup of French-pressed coffee in hand while the hummers had breakfast. Will the little buzzing birds visit me in the swamp?
And my mind veered to the new place. Wait 'til you see it. Almost the anti-farmhouse. Every floor tiled. Asphalt driveway covered by an aluminum carport. Washer/dryer hookups in my bedroom. And the funkiest spiral staircase I've ever seen, let alone lived with. Watch out for the pointy screws poking beneath each step.
I'll share the 70-year-old bungalow with The Editor. It's a big deal. He tried to rouse me about that the other night, as we collapsed in his tiny garage apartment that's so close to our new place you can smell it through the sticky city air.
"We're gonna live together!" he said with an expectant, happy grin. I think I fell asleep immediately after that. Life's been like that for a couple of months: work work work of one kind or another at my computer, in the town library, next to the river, or from someone else's home, shuttling in my sweaty van back and forth between there and here and over there again, and crawling to bed before anyone else, comatose on first nod.
This morning, it came to me how homeless I've been for a long time. That's not a whine. Fact is, I think it's good.
In a spot shaded from the hotter morning sun here on Karrie's porch, I lifted my hair over the back of the old school desk chair, the one in which I huddled next to my London wall heater last winte r, and leaned back, my legs stretched out in almost-full recline on the splintery wood. Everything in front of me was green and moist. My cranium felt full of spinning wheels and linked gears churning out first one task, then another. Monkey mind mode. But it was good. It's been a long time since there was space in my existence for un-focus, for not being compelled to zero in on One Thing At a Time while the others go unheard in my head 'til it's their turn for doin’. A long time since I just sat and listened to the noise instead of trying to turn it off.
I felt the homelessness, and all the fretting and scheming and hoping that goes along with it. It's not new to me, but this morning, I didn't mind it at all. For every plan, I know there's a molecule somewhere that can jar it awry, and I'm cool with that.
There are loose ends to tie up out there still, but I've arrived again at my home: I am grateful to be this compound thing I am and have been thus far.
And for now, I have dog hair to vacuum, plants and laundry to load up, and another road to drive. After The Boy wakes up from his adolescent slumber. And another cup of coffee.
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