esprit de l'escalier

In Ohio

Well, the first stage of the move is complete. Frank and I rolled into my parents' drive around 9pm. The morning was full of loading up a van (with lots of thanks to two very strong young men who helped) and last minute sorting, sifting, remembering things that were tucked some place odd. Oh shit. I just realized I forgot some board games under the couch. Natasha, I hope you can take them for a while.

My Mom drove the rental truck and left about an hour ahead of me. Frank impressed me on our journey. He mewed for a short while, but then he went back and forth between my lap and his open cage without much fuss. He's already adapting to the much larger home he's found himself in. There are so many new smells and corners to discover. I'm not sure what he's going to do when he realizes that there is no Natasha head to curl up behind on the couch.

We still need to put most of my stuff in storage, which will happen sometime tomorrow. It's all unreal. I was able to see a bunch of excellent friends before I left. I don't think the fact that this is my new life will sink in until I've settled into some sort of routine. Also unreal? Having to borrow underwear from your mother because your underwear is trapped in moving van several blocks away.

Penultimate day of work

Today was my penultimate day of work. I got a little blurry a couple of times. There was a surprise going away party for me and another guy, whose last day is Tuesday. I almost thought no one was doing anything. Especially when nothing happened in our staff meeting and I got cut off during my good bye to the group by our head person. But then a friend acted weird about something, and then my boss did, and I thought the meeting scheduled for today might be a party. I wasn't positive, but was when I caught my boss coming out of the elevators with a cake.

It still doesn't feel like I'm leaving for good. It's hard to get your mind and body prepared for a change when you continue with your daily routine. Today, around 3:30 a huge storm slammed into downtown, quickly turning the sky to black and engulfing the Sears Tower. Everyone left their work untouched for about a half an hour, congregating by the windows, watching the sky unload, chatting with each other. Odd I won't see them next week, or the next.

I packed up all my decorations at the end of the day. My cube is denuded, and will probably bum me out tomorrow. Somehow my umbrella escaped my bag and there was a torrential downpour by the time I reached my stop. For some reason I thought I'd chance it. I was immediately drenched and my shoe broke. I made it halfway until I ducked onto a porch stoop and waited for it to let up. Somehow most of my prints made the trip unscathed, even with water pooling at the bottom of the bag.

After toweling off, I set to work on a stack of papers to sift through. I found some doodling quotes in the mess. I like both of these quotes. They resonate with me today. Hopes and haunts.

I probably won't post again til next week. Wish me luck with packing! Less than a week til moving day.

On a Wednesdsay

Taken while at the farm. I added them to the "On a Wednesday" flickr pool.

Technical difficulties, etc.

I returned from a hot, slightly exhausting, family trip to Wisconsin late Wednesday to find the cable and internet out. The roommate and I may just cancel it since we're canceling it so soon anyway, so I may be without my beloved internet until I move. Which means you all will have to wait to see the bajillion polas and other film I took while away. Some of these polas are seriously cute, and hopefully my 35mm film turns out.

My trip was exhausting due to some family drama (that seems to have sorted itself out in the best possible way) and the fact that there were at least 5 kids 5 and under chasing me around. "Can you push me on the swing?" "Take my picture in the tree!" "Claire! Where you going?" "Can you sit next to me?" Be careful what you wish for people. I wanted the kids to like me and then I had an entourage I couldn't shake.

The official countdown til moving day has begun, plus I have one more work week left. And the packing? I keep saying it starts tonight. Let's hope I'm not fooling myself.

Oh, and guess what? I get to *finally* meet Jennifer of Saying Yes. Sunday promises pie and some good talking. I am lucky indeed.

The cat and the parsley

Last week we got a bunch of parsley in our CSA box. To keep the herbs we've been getting fresh, we've been cutting the tips and placing them in glasses of water, like green flower displays. Well, it turns out that Frank loves parsley. We kept finding sprigs strewn about the apartment, and then we finally caught him playing with it.

Parsley is a perfect cat toy. It's fragrant, has a long stem and a shaggy head of leaves, perfect for dangling, or pawing back and forth (as Frank would do solo). I couldn't get a good shot of him playing with it, but above is him checking it out.

Also, at some point this weekend, my roommate, cat and I were on the couch, watching something on my laptop. We rig up the laptop in a sort of ridiculous way everytime we do this, with cables stretched dangerously all around. As it tends to happen I tripped over one and sent the whole thing crashing down with a curse. For some reason, because it's not like this hasn't happened before, this freaked Frank out more than ever before. He puffed up so big (see above) and then hid and would not come out for over an hour. It was totally bizarre. For a long time after that his tail was still a puffball.

Anyhow, I leave you with silly cat stories. I'm off for a quick family vacation. Be back next week.

On time and friendship

I have just returned from seeing a pair of friends I haven't seen in the last year and a half or so. It's been long enough for her to get pregnant and have the baby without me knowing. And they live within a mile of me. We've been very remiss in our friendship.

The past year and a half have been so busy that I've let a lot of friendships slide. I used to be so good and was a great keeper of tabs on many people. School and work have cut into that and I've not seen people that I don't already see on a normal basis. It's been too hard for me to plan in enough in advance to make differing schedules work, so I didn't try.

Perhaps I'm a little hard-hearted about it all, but I see it pragmatically, as being part of life. Time (and space) pushes people apart. As for the friends I saw tonight, we easily fell back into companionship. The reasons why I like them so much came flooding back, and we laughed and chatted and I cooed over their new baby. It's very possible I won't see them again, at least not for a very long time, which is sad, but we lead very different lives and I know the next time I do see them will be similar in tone to tonight.

I know I'm not completely hard-hearted about my pragmatism, though. A lump keeps rising in my throat when I think of my life and friends that I am going to be leaving behind here. I suddenly want to photograph everything: the buildings I pass on my ride to work, my cubicle, even the co-workers that drive me crazy. The co-workers I love, I don't know what to do about. I know it's inevitable that I will lose touch with some, and that keeping tabs on people seems to grow harder as you grow older, but I don't want to think about it. I'm afraid I'm going to cry like a baby on my last day of work.

A snippet of a Wilco song ("Sky Blue Sky") plays over in my head. Jeff Tweedy sadly crooning, "So happy to leave what was my home." I feel a little guilty leaving and being excited to leave, knowing how much I'm going to miss what was my home.

A beautiful mystery on the verge of understanding

Yesterday Charles Simic was named the 15th poet laureate.

I first read Simic's collection The World Doesn't End for a class on tricksters I took as a freshman in college. (This class remains one of my favorites.) The book is full of dark images, absence as presence and unknowns, as well as a sly humor creeping in. I love it. Below is one of my favorites.

Once I knew, then I forgot. It was as if I had fallen asleep in a field only to discover at waking that a grove of trees had grown around me.

"Doubt nothing, believe everything," was my friend's idea of metaphysics, although his brother ran away with his wife. He still bought her a rose everyday, sat in an empty house for the next twenty years talking to her about the weather.

I was already dozing off in the shade, dreaming that the rustling trees were my many selves explaining themselves all at the same time so that I could not make out a single word. My life was a beautiful mystery on the verge of understanding, always on the verge! Think of it!

My friend's empty house one of its windows lit. The dark trees multiplying all around it.

My new favorite photo of le chat

Last frame of film on a roll finished Sunday, taken with my new Nikon. Frank's poses would make Tyra proud.

I still don't have much to say. The heat and bright sun are giving me headaches. I got my eyes checked today and they are just a teensy bit worse than my current glasses (which I got in 2005), so I decided not to get new frames and lenses. I did, though, drop a wad on prescription sunglasses, so my sister will stop yelling at me and so my squint-induced headaches will go away.

I'm also seriously behind in packing. Oh, how I hate packing. I priced out a moving van, though, and lined up a couple of guys to pack it up for me. Three weeks left at work. Four weeks in the city. Time is flying.