Moving

Altogether, from the beginning of May to the end of July, I spent 9 weeks moving. Five weeks in Baja and San Diego/LA, a few weeks back in Phoenix, 4 weeks on the road to the East Coast and back. I was home for a week at the end of July, during which time I spent three nights in a hotel here in the Valley because of a conference I was attending and at which I was presenting a talk. This in itself lent a surreal feeling to the fact that I was back in Phoenix, especially since the hotel was in the thick of things in Tempe, on Mill Avenue, a place I had often walked past and never thought about.

Then, on August 1st, I moved for real. Into a 250 square foot studio apartment, a detached guesthouse, less than a mile from Arizona State. Fortunately, I had divested myself of nearly 300 record albums by digitizing them all and selling them. I had also gotten rid of 4 medium boxes of books, a lot of clothes and a lot of other items. It was less challenging to move everything, including my drums, into the new place. 

Palms in the swanky courtyard of the Tempe hotel

Some swag from the conference I attended

As I briefly mentioned a couple days ago, the epistolary romance/friendship/love affair/heart splatter "ended" for about a week, yet I found (a little disturbed and a little overjoyed) that I couldn't end or even very successfully detach from my mysteriously powerful feelings. Throughout the conference, the two of us continued to communicate, but had agreed to "color within the lines." 

I have never been very good at that. 

Joan Mitchell, Untitled, 1961, The Modern, Fort Worth TX

It's interesting, looking back at our messages-- I was wrong in how I remembered things. Whatever was happening "ended" in a sort of flimsy, wet Kleenex-style arrangement. The two of us continued largely unabated anyway. The attempt to rein things in was Sunday the 23rd and by Saturday the 29th there were no more lines to color within. And in between, only the outward form of our being enamored of each other changed. The best I myself could do, for sure, was pretend. 

In general, what is an accurate record of an ineffable experience? Because my memory tells one story, our messages tell another, this blog tells another, my cell phone photos and videos tell another. All of the stories hang together and make sense, in some ways. But I am glad there is an actual record of our conversations. It's plain to see that, whether we were prepared or not, whether we knew better or not, and whether we wanted to choose a particular outward form of how we were going to relate with each other, something essential and with a vibrant life of its own was moving tidally underneath all of it.

I had two days to finish an hour long presentation that I was going to give to a room full of very critical experts. It was very difficult to focus, in some ways, but I was also feeling this certain, absolutely sure, confident and hyperfocused waking passion for everything. The dreariness of returning to Phoenix in the high summer faded. 

I was astonished to find myself happy.