So It Begins. Or Ends. Or Something.
We're about to enter the Time of Great Wackiness here at Peapod. Pea herself is slammed with deadlines for the next three weeks. Because it's the beginning of the year, I'm starting to get calls for various projects, one of which will sooner or later result in a gig for me, probably on-site. And we're trying to get the house prepped to hit market at the end of the month.
So I'm swathing the dining room in layers of plastic and that low-stik blue tape that 3M charges too much for, mainly because no one else makes anything like it. I will use sanding blocks to remove 40%-75% of the spackle that I've been slathering on the walls like a monochromatic frescoer of limited faculties. This will create great drifts of spackle dust that will inevitably cover the entire house with a thin layer of white powder, plastic or no. And somewhere in the midst of all this we must continue to remove our possessions a few boxes at a time, stashing them in the storage unit, and tidy up the place, to make it look like it's worth living in.
Which it is. I like this house, I always have, despite the car wash beyond the back fence and the various oddities inflicted upon it by the previous owner. It was strange to wake up this morning in the bedroom, snug and warm and toasty, and think that I will be trading its Whimsical Blue-painted walls for the blue and white nylon of my tent. The buzzing knot in my chest wasn't really due to that realization, though...it was more about how much needs to happen during the next 21 days. I'm at the edge of a committed free-fall into change, which lifts my guttiwuts into my throat as surely as the first drop on a good wooden roller coaster.
There are days when it's more real than others, and this is one of those: Bob the Cat, sleeping with big fat comfort on the end of this futon-couch, has no idea that in four months or so she'll be in a strange place, with a strange new person. I won't be looking up at these fake ceiling beams and detesting the textured crap-paint that surrounds them. No more trash night, no more recycling on alternate Tuesdays. No more waiting for the creek to flood the basement in the Spring. No more books on bookshelves, no more music studio, no more mortgage. I'm swapping it all for an unknown, a journey that, for now, is best represented by a set of maps.
Sometimes, I can see myself getting literally sick for home, for this place. I imagine what it will be like on the bad days - after a week's worth of rain, when all my gear is soaked, and I'm hidden in a patch of rhododendron off of some country road or stuck in a motel room in a town I've never heard of that's in a state I've never been to before. But I'll be homesick for a home that no longer belongs to me, for a life that I've given up. I wonder what that will be like...but I try not to wonder too much. It's important, now, to stay somewhat focused, lest the sweeping potential of transition carry me away and, paradoxically, prevent me from doing what I need to do to bring it about in actuality.
