ISO: Writing discipline

I'm not writing poems anymore. Maybe it's the past three years of producing them for any and all occasions. Maybe it is that I've not had a lot of free time to think about things in the particular way poetry demands. Perhaps it is simply that there has been no real demand now that I'm out of office, but...my poem production has dwindled to a low ebb. Even my other writing has been curtailed, for unknown reasons. I find myself with my writing group gathering looming, and I have nothing to take with me. This is unprecedented.

Maybe this is writer's block, but I don't think so. I have noticed things and thought, "Hmmm. I could do something with that.." only to get distracted by some other quotidian concern--like what to make for dinner, or whether I should do the laundry today or tomorrow morning. I think I am at one of those places where I have to impose some discipline upon myself in order to produce something, anything that is worthy of reading. (Blogs, status updates, and emails do NOT count.)

But for now, I need to get something for dinner, check on the laundry....and think really hard about something to commit to paper. Today.

Moving forward..

I've been writing about real estate and home ownership for far too long, but--unfortunately--that has been my life for the past few months. Hard to believe that 6 months ago, we hadn't even thought about moving...Obviously, life can turn on a dime.

Interestingly, the whole moving process has unearthed a number of ideas, themes, launching pads for new writings. As I file random papers, I come across the collected Christmas letters for the past twenty-five years. Reading them is a revelation of where we've been and what we've accomplished: a verbal photo album that begs for consideration. Every issue we encounter in the new house turns up memories of previous experiences. Boxes that have lived in storage for nearly ten years, unexamined and forgotten, yield unexpected treasures and equally unexpected associations: vintage linens from JC's grandmother, our daughters' baby clothes, a crumbling wedding veil from JC's mother, dolls and toys that might again get some play-time with Audrey...and pictures and paintings and prints and maps and mirrors--all with stories to tell.

And along with all this comes the question: who will tell all these tales? Who will remember that this quilt came from the old dresser in the hall in Rogersville and was appliqued by JC's grandmother? That this veil is the one in his mother's wedding portrait? Who will recollect the wild Christmas Eve dash to Toys 'R Us to elbow through the crowds and stand in the interminable line to buy the Cabbage Patch kid that had been ordered months before? Who will know that it was this impossibly small dress that disappeared up the steps of that immense schoolbus on the day Kay started kindergarten? Who will identify the aunts and uncles and cousins, unrecognizable in their baby portraits, their youthful snapshots?

Moving to a new house is a step toward the future, of course; there are new places, new people, new adventures in store. But, just as much, it is also a trip backward, a plow cutting through our lives, turning them upside down, revealing all the hidden pieces, and making way for new and fruitful seasons.

What next?

Moving is always a revelation. This move has been...interesting. Since we took possession, there have been a variety of issues that didn't show up on the home inspection, despite the thoroughness thereof. Weird.

First was the water. The outside spigot where one would normally attach a hose is attached to the hot water line. We could boil eggs in the water it spews forth. Obviously this explains why the previous owners had no plants. They must have boiled them all while attempting to water them. Yet they professed no knowledge of this phenomenon when we asked. You'd think they just MIGHT have noticed that the water coming out of their hose was steaming.

Next, the condensate line from our air conditioner was nowhere to be found. Normally this is not my first priority in settling in, but...our air conditioner stopped because the line backed up. Fortunately, our HVAC tech was able to find and clear it--after about 18 hours of non-air-conditioned discomfort. In his search, however, he also detected a live wire in the space behind our furnace that he claimed was sparking. Enter the electrician. Who confirmed that we had a 240 volt bare wire, attached to nothing, lying about behind the wall of our 4th floor study. Gee. Previous owners knew nothing about that either. I am detecting a definite Seargeant Schulz syndrome here ("I know nothing, NOTHING!")

Then, one morning last week, I attempted to adjust the angle of the showerhead. Big mistake. The entire assembly (and I mean down to the surface of the tile wall) crashed off the wall and whacked me on my ankle. Yet another bruise. Yet another trip to Ace Hardware. Yet another call to Lonnie, the plumber at Cropp-Metcalfe. Because the pipe in the wall would not accommodate the standard shower arm, it being threaded on the outside, rather than the inside. We were thus afforded the opportunity to check out the other showers in the house for a few days. I haven't bothered to ask the previous owners about this.

And then, there is the washer/dryer. The detergent/bleach dispenser was absolutely black with what looked like mildew when I first went to use it. I opted to run an empty load with a serious shot of Clorox poured through the dispenser, and that helped a lot. However, there's still a sort of smoky odor that comes from the washer/dryer. It's also in the upstairs bathroom, whose door had been closed to keep the cat out. And you can catch a whiff of it occasionally in the upstairs bedroom. Were the previous owners heavy smokers? The drapes don't smell...maybe they were cleaned. Perhaps we have a ghost who does laundry and frequents the 3rd floor...that ghostly couple on "Topper" were always smoking, weren't they?

For now, I am on tenterhooks, waiting for the next issue to arise. Who knows what will come next?

..and the inevitable poem:

Almost Home

Houses have a soul.

This one is no different.

It lives and breathes and speaks

in different accents than the ones before,

but, as with new friends, we decipher

as best we can

what our relationship will be.

It was chilly, dry and sterile,

its courtyard a blank brick box

with a thirsty black fountain

and sprouting weeds

in the concrete planters

crouching on the wall.

Inside, the mismatched colors,

the schizophrenic lavender-browns paired

with creamy yellow and grayed-out whites,

swallowed the token pictures on the walls:

like thick glasses framing the squinty eyes

of a child who had forgotten how to play.

But now, we have angels dancing along the kitchen counter,

and arks on every shelf;

pictures and colored maps embrace odd corners,

and a fan-shaped mirror hangs

above a fan-shaped window

like a silent play on words.

There is pottery in the windowed bathroom cabinet

and cheerful monsters on the windowseat,

and a lion doorknocker smiling

on a Christmas red door.

And the courtyard now has flowers:

Velvet petunias and firecracker geraniums

tempered with spiky purple plants,

with basil and mint, and pots of holly…

The leaves rustle, and the fountain almost burbles

—just a little—

when I come through the gate.

It’s almost home.

Eventful

Hard to believe my last post was less than two weeks ago. I feel as if I've been fast-forwarded to the end of the month, with little to show for it in the way of accomplishment. We have emptied boxes and put stuff away, but now we are down to the substantial residue of stuff that needs to be sorted, filed, disposed of, or thought about. These are the boxes of little covered china boxes, or the dozen or so cat sculptures I've brought home from trips, the dozens of planned-but-uncompleted projects that have whiled away the past few years in storage or in the attic. This is the pile of tablecloths, placemats, runners, napkins that speak to my inability to set a table twice with the same napery. Also to my unwillingness to iron napkins. It doesn't help that we have had (still have, in some cases) a variety of tables of various sizes, and thus possess an equal variety of tablecloth sizes and runners in coordinating colors.

And yet, and yet...in spite of our overabundance of stuff, the new house demands more. We have different-sized rooms that need rugs; a room or two that we have no furniture for (or at least not appropriate furniture); we need a toaster because this oven doesn't possess that function. A longer hose, a shorter curtain, a cushion for the windowseat, a paper towel holder, shelving to turn a closet into a linen closet....It's enough to earn us a place in the Consumption 'R Us Hall of Fame.

However, in spite of my protestations, I have accomplished quite a bit since the last week in June. Closed the sale on our old house, settled on the new, flew to Providence to meet my daughter's movers and sign off on the move-in, unpack, then fly back to meet OUR packers and movers and vacate the old house and move to the new. Once here, we've unpacked, had the HVAC system and plumbing vetted, phone, internet and cable installed, as well as the security system, WiFi network established, neighbors met, and a rough idea of where things need to be moved to and what must yet be done.

I guess I am just not satisfied until I have created a semblance of order out of the chaos we've created. Wish me luck.

Assortment

A box of nothing but vases
3 card tables
2 deep fryers
A mandoline
A box of piano books and music (no piano)
6 boxes of cookbooks
A box of wires, electronic connectors, and at least 10 thumb drives
11 umbrellas
6 sets of rigid plastic shelving
12 rolling storage bins, metal mesh
5 restaurant-grade aluminum cookie sheets
8 short, wide bookcases
2 matching taller ones
A box of miscellaneous cooking utensils
3 beds: a double, a 3/4, and a twin missing critical hardware and mattresses
4 sets of china
A double set of ironstone
An infinite variety of salt and pepper shakers and sugar bowl/creamer sets
Assorted pieces of milk glass
Assorted silver pieces, unpolished
Assorted cut glass bowls and dishes
Assorted crystal pieces: candlesticks, drinkware, etc.
Plastic storage-ware

A partial list of what has been unearthed in the quasi-archaeological expedition that we call moving.....and I haven't even arrived at the really mysterious level: the stuff that has been in storage for the past five years...I will be surprised if we don't find a missing person somewhere in this pile, or at least the ashes of a dead pet. But that was the garage-cleaning story...

Packing

I am abysmal at sorting and packing. What I end up doing is LOOKING, instead of turning into a packing automaton, filling boxes as if I were some assembly-line robot. Maybe it's just that I am too attached to all my stuff. Just this weekend, I read in the Washington Post magazine a first-person article on hoarding. (It was written by the guy who moderated a Creative Non-Fiction workshop I took several years back, so of course I had to read it..) What he was told by the experts was that the hoarder looks at his or her 'stuff' as a second self; that throwing things away diminishes himself.

Well, that may be true, because all my things added together DO comprise a pretty good self all by themselves. If you analyzed the contents of my desks and cupboards and drawers, you'd have a fairly accurate picture of who I am. Frighteningly so. There are dishes. LOTS of dishes. I like dishes; so much so that I have 5 sets of china and a double set of the same ironstone pattern that I bought before we were married. Can I help it that my mother-in-law liked the pattern too? Placemats and napkins and candles. I might have fewer of these if I didn't hate ironing so much. But tablecloths require ironing, as do napkins. So much easier to run out and buy a new set of placemats/ napkins at the Crate and Barrel outlet up Duke Street if we're having company. They tell me the 'bare table' look is becoming fashionable. YES!!!

Another telling observation is that there is almost no item of which I have only one. Good things come in threes around here, or multiples thereof. If one candlestick is good, six is even better. Maybe this reflects my insecurity--the fact that I always need a backup in case something goes wrong. Or maybe it's my aesthetic sense. I like the look of odd numbers of things, but almost all stuff comes in pairs. Whatever. Suffice it to say that my house right now looks like an explosion in a box factory as I inventory my life, drawer by drawer.

We took a dispiriting trip to the storage space yesterday as well. In order to hang all the framed pictures, prints, maps, posters, collages, etc, that we have accumulated, I think we'd need to rent the Louvre. And reading today in the Times about someone's father who owned a farm and a 30 000 book library, I thought, "So???" I've started waking in the night wondering where my daughter's mummified wedding dress will go, and whether there will be enough room for all my Christmas stuff, and what would they do to me if I just shoved all the boxes in storage out into the corridor at the United-Storall and walked away? Perhaps I could do a blind, grab-bag garage sale...tell the movers to deposit all our boxes (except the books, of course) on the brick patio of the new house, throw wide the gates, and sell the sealed boxes for $20 a pop. Cash, and most emphatically, CARRY. Who knows what treasures people could walk off with? And if I haven't unpacked these boxes from the last move (or maybe the one before) I obviously don't need the contents. Even I don't know what secrets they hold.

Retirement plan: Learn to use e-Bay and sell everything.