Rotorglow

Winter makes you do strange things.

So, I'm moving. For the 4th time in 9 years, and the 6th in 16. That's right; I just can't stay in one place too long. What's hilarious is that like the last time, it actually feels like it's going to be temporary. I have no real way of knowing, and maybe it won't but....it doesn't *feel* permanent. But it's still an upgrade, and since it's in the same building and I got a good deal on it, it's totally worth doing.

How *much* of an upgrade it is in question. The place is bigger, but not quite big "enough." Whatever that means. There's no garage, so I'll still be working on the car in the street. No dogs allowed. Lots of neighbors, so I still have to be careful about blasting music.

It also doesn't address the possibility that I need a wholesale change of scenery. But that's a much bigger question that I can't seem to answer while I'm up to my neck in crap. So as I gain enough room to, like, walk around, have a living room and host a salon, get cameras off the closet floor and into a cabinet, etc., maybe some of that other stuff will come into focus.

So what does that leave? The main thing is that I'm finally going through a variety of junk that's accumulated, touching and making a decision on pretty much everything I have. There's a lot of reacquainting (with things I haven't been able to use for years because I didn't have the space, like an actual couch, on which people can sit and watch baseball and discuss things), and disacquainting.

The latter is the most important. There's stuff that I've gathered (or refused to pitch) since the last move in 2003, of course. But there's also a ton of stuff that I simply put aside when I moved out of my last house. Stuff I couldn't have "dealt with" even if I'd wanted to, because I just didn't have the energy at the time, and the prime goal was simply to get the transporting of it over with as quickly as possible. I had no idea--none--that a lot of it was going to languish in a storage box for 6+ years, but there it's been, sitting unexamined in the dark. While I paid to keep it out of the rain, but also to keep it around just so it'd be there when I got to it.

As it turns out, I'm throwing most of that stuff out. And of course *could* have thrown it out before. (Actually the proper term is "freecycing", which is as time consuming and creepy as it is virtuous.) But almost all of that crud that I haven't looked at in 6 (or 10 or more) years? Gone. Or will be. Which means that the storage unit is going to be out of my hair.

Going through all that stuff is also a long trip down memory lane. And memory lane is always bumpy to some degree, so that's been a strange experience. Not the quite the unalloyed misery that I expected, but...not awesome. But in the long run, it's good. Also incomplete, and it probably raises as many problems as it solves, but hey. It's progress that wasn't happening before I embarked on this mission to move 100 feet away.

The whole thing often feels like little more than stirring up mud at the bottom of the pond, and I'll just wait for it all to settle out again and be like it was never disturbed. But I think/hope it'll turn out to be more like dredging a channel. Making it possible for people, activity, events to come *in* is important.

But carving a path through (some) muck--physical and mental--and trying to get *out* to open water and whatever is on the other side of it, is absolutely vital.

Tail of the Dragon, 2008
Originally uploaded by rotorglow at 10 Jan '10, 10.45am EST.

it's 20°F in Boston right now, and I need a warm and happy place, here's a pic of my dad and me on the Dragon.

It's all perspective.

Today was one of those mixed bag days that demands a deep breath, a beer and a lot of effort to process (and avoid breaking something over someone's head).

I vacated my apartment today, after 8 years in it. That's at least 7 years longer than I thought I'd be in it. When I took it, it was a bit of a salve, "nicer" than I needed, more than I could really afford under the circumstances. But it worked out well for a while, until it didn't. I've dragged the move out for 3 weeks, but (as mentioned earlier) there was a lot that needed to be done. But now I'm done with it, and working on settling into the new place, which is fucking chaos at the moment. And in that sense, it's no worse than the old place, and has actual hope of being comfortable at some point soon. So, a definite hard-fought win there.

Speaking of "hope" (but not "hard fought" or "win") my fellow Democrats (and a shapeless yet revolting clump of "independents") have managed to drop a runny, steaming turd on Teddy's grave by electing, either through apathy or active shortsightedness and stupidity, a knuckle-dragging teabagger to the Senate. This stings on a number of levels. There's the obvious threat that only having 59 votes poses to the accomplishment of everything we as a country need to do in order to become as great as we used to be, as great as we could be, and (mystifyingly) still think we are.

Adding to this is the indignity of Ted Kennedy's seat--Ted Kennedy!!--allowing for the unraveling of all this work. It won't only be Brown, of course, but it's the thin edge of the wedge that allows other incurious and unsophisticated assholes in the Senate to fuck things up. And the fact that it's *this* particular seat is really galling.

And speaking of incurious assholes, there's something really galling to me personally about the apparent (based on today's election) profusion of them in what has almost always seemed to me to be a forward-thinking state (relative to most). It's something I've hung my hat on for a long time: politically, Massachusetts for the most part seemed to have its head on straighter than other states I've lived. Now I feel not a little bit betrayed by simpletons who claim "disaffection" and call for tax revolts, agitate to "stop the spending" and yell that "socialism does'nt [sic] work." (Seriously, I saw that on a sign among a bunch of Scott Brown signs on a house in one of the outer suburbs.) That so many FUCKING IDIOTS exist in general isn't a surprise, of course; Frank Zappa said that the most common element in the universe was stupidity. No, what's painful is that so many FUCKING IDIOTS exist *here*, which I'd come to think was one of the last bastions of what counts for intelligence anymore.

So *now* where am I going to go? At least most of my stuff is still boxed up.

For perspective, there's Haiti. I missed the first 48 hours of the Haiti crisis, but have done some catching up since then, and it's absolutely horrifying. There is always someone worse off, but it's hard to imagine who's worse off than Haiti. Spending a little time thinking about that underscores the "first worldness" of so many of our problems.

Certainly all of mine.

I saw a great band on Letterman last night: The Heavy. Kind of like The Make Up crossed with James Brown. And it's been a long time since I heard anything really new that I liked. Dave even made them do an encore, which I haven't seen in a long time. So that was good.

I managed to hurt my (clutch) knee today, by wearing a pair of shoes that I uncovered at the back of a closet while packing. I have too many shoes, and didn't need to wear these in particular--indeed, I'd been splashing around in other ones all morning--but they were just the right kind of snow boot/shoe crossover I needed for the slushy weather and the mission to a client meeting I had today. (Can't drive in my actual snow boots...) So since I'd just excavated them, I figured I'd wear them. Except it'd been so long since I wore them that the rubber sole had petrified to hard plastic.

I noticed this as I headed down the hall. They made an unfamiliar, loud, plasticky (rather than rubber) sound in the new hallway. I remember thinking, "hmm, bet the first few steps outside will be slippery." With the first step I took on the wet (not even icy) sidewalk, I tested the traction, just like I do in the car. Except this time I wasn't ready for the result. One foot slipped, and the other knee bent sideways in a way it's not supposed to as I tried to catch myself. In automotive terms, it was like poking the gas to test wheelspin, only to end up tail-first into a light pole.

So now I'm gimping around, mostly ok if I don't make any particular movements--such as the ones that are generally required when stepping over packed boxes, or trying to lift or unload them.

Having too many shoes feels like a first world problem of the highest order. Wearing the most dangerous of them is just silly. Or payback.

Or maybe there's nothing wrong with the shoes and it's just my clumsiness and age combining in new an unpleasant ways.

And finally, for now, age: Been thinking about it alot, but a new angle came to me a couple days ago. I've spent a lot of time (mostly) silently bitching about a new decade. But I've spent very little time thinking specificially about how much of my 30s actually sucked. Pretty much the first half was pretty awful. A third was fair to middling, and a fifth toward the end was pretty great. So instead of bemoaning this new decade and the injuries it brings, I need to occasionally remind myself how awful the last one was.

It's all perspective.

lake house 1/2010
Originally uploaded by rotorglow at 24 Jan '10, 10.53pm EST.

Nothing new; just a photo.