Mid-January, Rain - January 13, 2012 |
September 27, 2004 Quick Monday In & Out Yesterday was the perfect day in New England to go to the Big E, and while I did not, my sister and brother in law and a sloo of their friends did. I got just as much satisfaction out of their satisfaction as I'd have gotten by going myself. Instead I got a lot of local things done, closed my old apartment and put the keys through the office door slot, put a few more miles on the Tardis (can't wait to get up to that 1,000 mark, where I don't have to keep varying the speed), got curtain rods and sundries and unpacked a few more boxes. Today on my way out of town I'll return the cable box and modem to Comcast and then the transition will be complete. Amazing. ******** I also took a walk on Horse Barn Hill. It's part of the original UConn (U. of CT) campus -- the university began as an agricultural school, and this large U-shaped road winds around horse and cattle barns, sheep & hog pens, and borders miles of state forest with most excellent walking trails. I only walked over the hill for a while, having much else to do, but it was GOOD to go back. It's possibly the single most important location of my life. I ran and hiked there for years, all during my time with Ex, and the related events that took place in the 90's. I had a couple of little emotional associations during the walk, but it was okay and I just looked at them and let them happen, and remembered that this was 2004, an incredible year. In fact "the now" has taken on a different feel altogether, or maybe it's just made itself known differently. This morning, taking way old nail polish off my toes (finally found the polish remover), I sat on the bathroom floor in the light from the window and was easy in the now, in a way I almost never feel. I know it's from the changes and I'd like to cultivate the ability to feel Now even when things aren't to my liking. But it was nice to get the reminder. So many passages now, all year really; my sister had to put the black and white dog down last weekend. She (the dog) was not getting better, and they couldn't get her off Pred, and she was hardly eating. They'd tried all sorts of different diets hoping her symptoms were just food allergies, but everything seemed to affect her the same way -- or else she'd just choose not to eat at all. Braela was the last of the "new family" of dogs that Rose and Mike had when they first got together, some ten or eleven years ago. There was Kiska (down from bone cancer earlier this year), Ziggy (died a couple years ago from some other disease), Suni (little black dog... the one I see in the moon), and now Braela. It's a somber transition to a new era. Now there's Lucy the Hound, Linus the Cat, and Calvin the Psycho Shepherd who still needs a LOT of work if he's going to be a Fidelco-trained dog someday. And Carol's parents have weathered another hurricaine -- forgive me if I've written this already -- unable to evacuate, as her dad just got out of the hospital. I guess they did okay but there's no electricity again. ******** I completely forgot to mention, before I moved, that Dar and I went to see the incredible Lord of the Rings exhibit at the Boston Museum of Science. We spent all afternoon in this one huge exhibit room, where they had costumes, props and weaponry from the movies, and showed on various video screens how the effects were done -- making hobbits look small and wizards look big, for example -- and creating digital armies of thousands of warriors who would think for themselves and look like a real battle. It was, in a word, stunning. I cried covertly through most of it, as I did through the movies. That night, after a great meal at Elephant Wok, we went to see the Lion King onstage, and I used up the rest of my tissues. I'd wanted to see it ever since it first came out years ago, and while the script itself had a few weak parts, the spectacle was breathtaking. When I went to UConn, their puppetry department was gaining a lot of recognition for its innovative productions, and I expected this to be like some of the shows I saw there. It exceeded my expectations. Animal costumes built around the actors, who are manipulating them like puppets but integrated at the same time, so at first you don't know what to look at. After a while, although the actor is made up sort of like the character, you just watch the puppet because it's so convincing. There was a point where I was watching Timon, whose puppet aspect looked and moved just like the cartoon character, and suddenly I looked at the actor's face and wondered why he was ALSO speaking! The seats were very expensive and we sat in about the third row. ******** I've got to get packing now; away for a week again, but starting with three days of R&R at our yoga retreat. Then on to Buffalo. I plan to sleep a lot til Thursday. |
� free hit counter
|