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Well, they say that human beings became bipeds in order to be able to carry things. If so, I and my parents have fulfilled our evolutionary destiny today. What a lot of boxes!
No blogging for a while -- we've got to get a U-Haul to California, unload it, visit the Pacific Northwest and return to California. Hence, blogging will be light at best, absent at worst. Have fun while I'm gone!
I swear, my possessions are breeding in the corners when I'm not looking. How else can I explain the fact that I've been packing fairly steadily the last few days, the boxes of neatly packed and labeled things are becoming more numerous, the number of to-dos checked off the list is growing -- and it still looks like I haven't done anything!
(Voice of reason: That is because now you're packing things that have been hidden away in cupboards and there is lots of trash strewn about. Voice of hyperbolic ranting: Shut up.)
Ahem. Back on topic.
If you ever wondered how much you value your possessions, packing is a good way to judge. When you have lovingly swaddled a fragile glass globe into a box (labeled FRAGILE! DON'T DROP! DON'T CRUSH!) and kept it intact through several moves, you can safely figure that it is worth something to you. (Indeed, the act of caring so protectively for it may well temporarily increase its value.) When you spend a lot of time hunting for the right box to hold That Possession and for bubble wrap to protect it (drawing from one's carefully horded stash of used bubble wrap and packing peanuts), again, you can figure that in some way it is important to you.
On the other hand, the things that you look at and say "Okay, I can't make it fit in this box. Oh, well, I'll just donate it to Goodwill" or "Yech! Pitch!" have been clearly deemed Not Worth My Time (or Space).
Packing through several moves also lets you track how your values change -- that treasured something later inspires "Why did I pack this last time?" or "Okay, I have two of these now. How many do I really need?"
And on the meta-level, one wonders whether possessions are important at all, and if so, which ones and why. (Filling out a renter's insurance form can produce this state, too -- "If my house was on fire, what would I grab?"
Stuff, stuff, stuff. Someone once said that life consists entirely of moving dust from one place to another. Sounds about right.
Let's see. The past week I've been distracted, anxious, fretful, angry and unfocused. I've felt hot, flitty and frustrated.
Why? Well, the most immediate and obvious answers are (1) I'm moving and (2) it's been hot and humid.
That's not the whole story, though. I've been reading a book called Yoga for Your Type which talks about suiting one's yoga practice to your ayurvedic type. I waffle between being Vata (air -- intellectual, nervous, skinny) and Pitta (fire -- energetic, emotional, average). In ayurveda, this means that I have tendencies toward disorders associated with an imbalance of either type -- such as panic attacks or breakouts. This knowledge has been shoved to the back of my brain the past few days because I've been, well, busy!
So I was reading through the book and got to the section that talks about how environmental factors can aggravate imbalances and a little light went on. (It's a measure of how wound up I've been that this came as a "realization" -- I'd actually read about such things before.) Between the restless, messy chaos of packing (Vata-provoking) and the emotional upset of leaving friends and home behind and the heat (Pitta-provoking), it's not surprising that the past few days have been a bit of an emotional and physical tornado.
So this morning I followed the book's suggestions for a Pitta-reducing practice (since I was anticipating heat and humidity again -- which has indeed re-appeared)and I've been SO much calmer today. Ah. Tomorrow I think I'll do a Vata-reducing practice and keep alternating the two until life settles down again.
Note to self: such effects are part of why you do yoga, right? So DO YOGA! Stop blowing it off!
This is a very funny piece on dealing with the illogical and having fun in the process.
c/o Green Boogers.
It is meltingly hot today, even inside with the AC on. (I will admit that it is not on very strongly, but given that I am a cheapskate who prefers opening windows, the fact that it is on at all is indicative of the extremity of the weather.)
I am very glad that today is not the day of Moving Things Downstairs -- I am praying that the anticipated colder front comes through the day before -- but it is miserable nonetheless. I feel like I'm moving slower than usual; perhaps the extra humidity has resulted in more friction as I pass through the air?
The title of this post, by the way, comes from one of my informal ways of determining or categorizing the weather here. (Weather awareness is really important in the Midwest, I've discovered.) Wind from the south is often scented with the odor of grain roasting from a nearby plant; winds that bring rain come from the west; on really cold days you can see crows' breath; on days that are meltingly hot the occasional unhappy sparrow or house finch can be found panting on my porch, trying to cool off. It is a most pathetic sight.
The humid air sticks
To skin and spirit, while birds
Pray, panting, for rain.
I think my posts of the last few days have been confounding whatever rubric Blogger uses to generate the ads in the banner above my blog. For a while it was running ones for boxes and packing materials. Today it's offering free publishing.
The most entertaining were the ones for the previous two days, during which time visitors were informed that "This blank space is brought to you by Google."
(My traffic monitor has not been tracking google-based references lately, so I don't know if something involving recent searches is a factor. And on that note, go see Invisible Adjunct's post today on that topic.)
Uprooted, the tree
Topples, roots naked, exposed --
Worlds revealed beneath.
Since I'm moving, I'll be leaving my current internet provider behind. Today I ran across a link to MacDialUp. Does anyone know anything about them? Good experiences? Bad? Links to reviews of them? Or is there another good alternative of which I should be aware?
My needs are pretty straightforward: email, access to the net, website space and (a new thing for me) national coverage (in anticipation of future moves). Good service and friendly folks on the other end of the line are nice, too.
Thanks!
The jury's out on this new article at the Chronicle in which the author talks about the nausea-inducing range of non-academic career possibilities open to him as holder of a PhD in English.
Part of me is amused by it, part wonders what exactly the point of it is, and part simply thinks, "Oh, this was less interesting and entertaining than I'd expected."
Maybe I too could become a street performer.
Piece by piece by piece
I pack up my life and say
Good-bye home, and town.
My place for two years
I say good-bye in small stages
Each a small ripping.
Life falls, rises in pieces
Incrementally remade
And broken anew.
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