We’re not quite moved out but we’ve started moving in; the liminal time in between. Empty rooms are beginning to take their form. Boundless time is beginning to clump up and congeal into rhythm and routine. This is our first morning waking up in a new act in this city. This is also the first light of yet another solar return. We’ve made it through.
There is symbolism to this space. There’s a moral to our decisiveness and a lesson in our good fortune. It’s too early to find meaning in the day, but I’ll start making some anyway.
This place is a cozy bunker against the roar of circumstance. It’s quiet. It feels slow. I don’t know how long we’ll stay, but, for now, it feels good to be here. Sunken in earth, perched by placid water—it feels right and renewing to be here today.
Earlier in the week I felt flashes of angst about our relocation. Not “do” I belong here, but “should”… The comfort seems decadent, the fortune undeserved.
But I know that’s my monkey mind; it loves to sabotage a good thing. There’s no virtue in anxiety. There is honor in a gift well received.
This is my birthday breakfast of champions, Christine’s accurate take on a Full Scottish, minus the haggis and blood pudding, that we ate in stereotypical moving-in fashion off a cardboard box. Scotland has a special place in our hearts; that’s where we met—cue The Proclaimers’ “I Met You”—and had our intensely formative experiences. So it’s kinda fun to know that this neighborhood has a Scottish guy from over a century ago to thank for being here. And it’s even more delightful to learn that he hailed from a clan whose motto was: “touch not this cat.”