Coming back...

Well, I’m not sure what all that ‘recovery’ stuff was about.  I was on the verge of buying a domain name, renewable in perpetuity.  But now it looks like I’m into the blog thing I set up 13 years ago, when I was trying to decide whether or not to turn my life on its head.

I did it.  I’m back now, doing diddly poop, feeling stuck.  But hey!  I do meditate a bit; it looks as if I may have given up nicotine and that is frighteningly huge.  All I need to do is give up being a citizen of the USA, and the future is assured!  Now I must try to sleep, it’s late.  We’ll see if Henry P can really help.

Lonely

Henry stayed at the office this weekend, my TV is over at Griselda's, none of the usual folk are around.

My body's fine, so that's not the cause. I've been indulging not only in reflexology, with a woman who can intentionally send warm enlivening tides up from my feet - she calls it channeling, and shrugs; I don't call it, just feel enlivened - but another one who does Cranial Sacral Therapy. Now that really is magic! I find I've built my life's tensions all up and down into my spine, so that arthritis in knees, tendonitis in arms are worse than need be. Now, I learn to let my shoulders just drop; that when I do get tense so my neck really hurts - it will be better when I'm somewhere else later. Both therapies strenghten my conviction that staying in closest tune, responsive dialogue, with my feelings is the best route to continuing good health. (Henry knows some folks don't see it that way.)

So - Henry looks askance, even from the distance of Dover - the lonely feeling must be the fault of 007! None of the people I asked to go see Casino Royale with me could go; none who said they were going anyway, did! And - stop reading here if you intend to see it and don't want to know how it ends...

The most body-built of Bonds (reminds me of Steve McQueen) lets his shield down, and even makes an error reading a poker partner. It's probably no surprise that the girl lets him down, and his final talk with M is a commitment to Return to Work Forever, a promise of no more emotional vulnerability ever. But it's more subtle than that, with his self-endangering insistence on rescuing his beloved even after he sees her breath in the water: he loves her despite betrayal (we're not sure that's the same as forgiving it). The last poignant twist is her posthumous intelligence to him - she loved him despite being powerless not to betray him, and she understood where he'd want to head next, after her death.

And we all have these issues, eh? How much to trust, to be vulnerable, to love? Imagine a Bond movie laying that open!

My daily relationships are all set, and that I guess is what makes me lonely, not the absence of buddies to play with tonight, or even the vagaries of My Move coming inexorably closer. Too much comfort zone, not enough love in it, makes me feel old. That's probably why it was so hard to settle back into the old UK comfortable-slipper ways, last Spring: there was risk and edge in new relationships in Louisville (will I find love...): they didn't get time to settle. It will be lonely too, there, no one around who 'really knows' me. But it will be also be lively, and stimulating.

I can always move on again - back here, maybe! - after a while, if the 'lonely' of no growth or stimulation happens there.

It's good that only the Gardner with the beautiful Allotment, and that cute cat with the funny green hat read this, eh Henry. Other friends might not understand, might not care to think of themselves as old slippers.... And another way to view it is, of course, that I'm just not able to reinvigorate, to dis-comfort the zone, not lively enough for myself; am just projecting out the blame for it. Even if it is that, I'm bottomlessly grateful I'm not a prisoner, that I have the freedom to live out these explorations of mine, don't have to do them all in my head or with a limited and unresponsive cast of keepers.

Henry says that's probably enough for now. The cat's probably fallen asleep...

(Henry! Finally managed to work with Blogger's spell checker!)

Going home...

The question for me and Henry will always be, which home? There will never be just one. There may well be a favored local nest, like this nice flat has become. Like our fantasied small Louisville East End house, with lots of craftsman made furniture and a not-to-big garden may be.

I've got a flight back. And I've got a return set of flights, SDF to London to SDF, in April! Which piping event to go to, Halsway or Oxford? In 2007, can't go to both. It's Oxford; and a Folk Club and a Book Group. Expression of heart loving, not heart breaking.

And... Jefferson County will manage to register my Micra. So: final worry about taking it is covered, and the decision is YES! The metaphor is, Count Dracula's Transylvania soil in his coffin. As he can then always sleep At Home, so may I always Drive at Home. Til the engine dies.

Henry agrees that this blog, set up in angst about what to do, is coming to an end. But not tonight, Henry.

Monday the 13th

What a time.

Here in downtown Faversham, the bulbs are in most of the Christmas Lights webbing cable, just not in front of my house yet.

Tonight one could have gone to a dandy Film Society showing, or to the Creek Consortium and voted to shape destiny! Or gone to a Faversham Folk Club committee meeting, if you are on the committee. Or like me, dipped out of the Consortium meeting for a Craniosacral Therapy treatment with the amazing Amanda.

How many other things were going on this evening? How many people stayed home, worked on their stamp books or derived the benefit of their license fees? How many, like S my dear, were in hospital, ready for the operation to reconnect a stoma, to become free from bags of intestinal product resting on their stomach?

How many colostomys get reversed? How often does that work or not work, and if not, what then? What can I do to make it sure that the cancer is gone now, and he will never need the reversal reversed? How can I express the depth of my hatred of that disease, that eats people I love and need?

Other things: water monitoring will be late; the KPI is going ahead! except maybe for the software part; Arrivals...; take my car or not? Olivia loves me, and is giving me the benefit of her life in River City: will the insurance agent answer the email? Is the follow-up surgery/treatment of an anal abcess like other rectal problems? Who decides? Why my loved ones and not me? (Am I really either just not angry, or sufficiently aware of my anger to not need to somatise it? My friends with Bottoms, just at this point disowned me...) Do I pay off a mortgage here, or use the dosh as downpayment there? And what's that got to do with bottoms? Money....

At least I know who I am, and can prove identity against money laundering: passports, and birth, marriage, divorce certificates; UK and Ky photo driving licences; DHB pass; utility bills addressed to me here. Whee. In the summer, buying the flat, it was onerous. Now it's candy.

That's enough, Henry says. He of course is free of digestive engineering. Lucky to be stuffed!

Just a Sunday...

We're okay, Henry and I. Just, in a process of molecules gently floating off me, in transition to Louisville.

I finish work in 9 weeks, and expect to er, transit the week after.

Questions left to sort: what will I get from my pensions? What happens with the state pension? How best to go about moving dosh from here to there? Then, Car: will it be cost-effective to take it with me? Can I get it insured there? Do I really not mind having the Only Micra In America? Finally, where to live? Pension lump sum might = down payment on condominium or little house - and it does seem more sensible to do that than to pay off mortgage here. I think.

Going to see Stephen's accountant on Monday, make a start towards these money questions.

Now, to finish my final talk for the Dover Unitarians. Sadly, I'm not sure how long they'll be able to hold together. Henry (or maybe it's Jill!) reminds me I can't be responsible for that.

Okay, already...

Sorry Henry. Just lost huge soul-pourings to ignorance of how this stuff works. Maybe I'll be back later - hope that I'm not! - to try to recreate my long summary of Life Since June.

Humph.

Night terrors

I've gotten up very quietly, so as not to disturb Henry. Unlike the alarming noise-makers in the street outside.

While all my lights were out and I was trying to be asleep, someone - or maybe the wind, wishful thought - unhooked the prop keeping open the transom of my front window, and at the same time the rail holding up the net curtain, kept in place by the pressure of just-fitting, came down.

I heard noise, but when I looked out from above could see no-one. When I first looked down stairs at the door - nothing amiss. Only getting up now, and deciding to shut that window, did I find the noise explained. Someone else - or more wind? - now crashes around outside, it sounds like a grocery cart, up the market end of my street. It is breezy outside and that could be it.

Was someone trying to break in, or just making mischief, or just mindlessly fiddling with the first possiblity, irregularity in the surface of the buildings, first opening, they came across?

Meanwhile, I have internal terrors, around loss of control of everything from my body to my work to my finances. That will be some astrological phase, passing. I am susceptible, and sometimes it comes like this. My breathing is too shallow, I've made my heart weak by not exercising it, my bowels, well, they've been loose, at the best, for a year or more. Hoodia does stop me feeling hungry and some days I eat little. Some days I even drink little! But as soon as scales say 2 pounds down, I discover that my eating needn't relate to hunger at all. Where's the pill that gives hugs?

Yesterday, the re-negotiated due-date, I turned in a Requirements Statement, after days of dealing with dreaded details. In the vacuum, today, I mind-mapped changes consequent to my project, and an initial outline of options. J the boss, er, Sponsor, spring-boarded off my work into a framework of required costings. I'll have them next week, yes?

I should have had them already... if I were worth the spicy salt I'm paid. And I think of trying for a serious job in Louisville! (That project's well behind, eh?)

Will that same salt spread to debt, mortgages, investment opportunities? And a wine-tasting next week? Could I live on whatever pension I might be getting?

Well. Better for writing it out. And for explaining to B earlier this evening what coming back to the UK has felt like: Like, in Louisville I was sort of going bare-foot, and the old shoes I left in the UK just didn't fit right when I tried to slip back into them. My feet are mostly UK-shaped again now, but... I am wearing sandals a lot.

My pipes haven't been out of the box for two months. I have no idea how the new ones are progressing. I hardly even listen to music.

But my opinion of my ability as a photographer improves. I have the Google Desktop bar, and the Photos section cycles thru all my zillion (less than a Brazilian...) pictures, and often I glance up and, the picture looks really good! I've just this evening opened a Flickr account and uploaded 6 pics from April in North Carolina. I guess I'll learn how to use the facilities in time. Shame Yahoo don't offer a Flickr tutorial (or maybe I'll find it...).

Henry says I'm rambling now, and he's right so I'll quit.