So it is now that I find myself in my new apartment in Essex that I feel that need to reflect on some of what has been going on the last few weeks. You know, namely the whole- packing up all of our stuff and moving to the UK bit.

9 August 2006
Sittting in Bryant Park- We are now in New York City for 6 days before we leave for Essex, but for now we rest. It still seems quite unreal, but how else could it feel?

“Do I dare… Do I dare eat a peach?” t.s. elliot
Many people have commented upon the bravery that must be present to make such a move as this… I appreciate the sentiment, but I am not sure if it is bravery. I don’t feel invinceable… I suppose if I thought about it I feel quite scared and ungrounded at the moment.
For example- at this moment Jon and I are without a home. It was so odd to wake up in the hotel room this morning and realise that we were not going back “home” after a few days in New York… there is now -back- in our plan at all and what lies before is unknown.
So we keeping moving forward. It doesn’t feel brave- it feels like what we should be doing. As if going in any other direction would be going against the forces of nature.
“First my left foot then my right behind the other breadcumbs lost under the snow…” tori amos

Random Words Over Heard in New York City

“So what do you do?”
“Uh… I’m- uh… film maker.”
(it sounded so- I just came up with this what do you think)

“So the peice had problems with it, but… I cried” (about a play recently seen)

“Televisionegetic” (As in she is photogenic and televisionegetic)

“Thank God the West Side! I am never going to the East Side again!!” (after an hour and a half rain storm that left many people stranded throughout the city while we waited for the storm to pass)

“I am going to send this to grandpa- So you have to look pretty. (Don’t you just love spontaneous vacation snapshot. How very relaxing.)

“Come Here- I am not jumping in after you!” (You wouldn’t want a small child to stare too long at a body of water in central park. It hurts their mind I’ve heard.)

“We must leave before she thinks we jumped in.” (Apparently many people are worried about the safety of this family… you know if they stop for too long they might just calm the @#?! down… and we wouldn’t want that would we?)

“Yes, you have to have a ticket for the Darwin exhibit, but if you look to your left you can see turtles for free… (A very bitter Natural History Museum employee explains to me the finer points of exactly what my 14 dollar “suggested donation” affords me. Thank god he was there to help- I might have never opted to look to my left at all. I hate the think of it…)

17 Aug 2006

So now we are here. I am trying to collect my thoughts, but it feels like I have them scattered everywhere… Perhaps I should just jump into them and not worry about collecting at the moment.
Jon and I arrived in Essex yesterday around 4 p.m. (UK time which I suppose is properly put 16:00) after much ado… Though I have been feeling for quite some time now that this whole moving to the UK thing was too surreal to truly happen- I will have to say that the day leading up to our arrival drove that point home.
We arrived at Newark Airport 3 (days in advance… no hours -yes hours) before our scheduled departure time only to find out that we would no longer be leaving at 9:45pm or even 12:00am, but that we were expected to be able to leave at 2:00 am. We were so excited to have this extra time to spend in Newark airport… as we so rarely get time to relax and enjoy the luxuries that airports afford one. So we had time…. and time… and a cosmo and a whiskey sour… and some more time… and some chinese food and a “new jersey” philly cheese steak and some time… and well you get the point. Fifteen minutes before the boarding time of 1:15 we were informed that we would get an extra 30 minutes… and let me tell you- we were excited…
Note:
I do have to say that through all of this Virgin Atlantic (the lovely people who helped transport us) were absolutely wonderful. They were friendly, even though I feel certain that they had dealt with far too many irate people upset with them over something that they had no control over. They fed us… which was quite nice of them… and they tried to be as helpful as possible.

So around 2:30ish we finaly left the ground of Newark, New Jersey and headed towards our new adventure.

And here are some pictures of our New York adventure…

So I wake up this morning to this wonderful light. The sun is coming in through the windows and the sky is this perfect light blue. A cool breeze was flowing through the house… and I just thought -wow- how lucky am I to wake up to this, I don’t know how else to say it, perfection. Though I was up early this morning letting puppy dogs in and out and in and out I went back to bed and slept till a glorious 9:30. It t’was wondermous.

It is times like this that speak to me and say- Yes, you are where you need to be right now and that is so very wonderful.

With that wonderful beginning I have spent my day enjoying small, peaceful steps. This morning after coffee and a wonderful breakfast fixed by Jon I spent some time cleaning the house. Then I went out in the yard for a bit and played- with weeds and seeds and the sun. Overall, simply wonderful. A nice juxtaposition to the week that was at times stressful and a bit hopeless feeling.

So I breath and enjoy this glorious day and worry I do not.

If more people were screaming then I could relax, but a good brain ain’t didly if you don’t have the facts.
-Ani Difranco-

Sometimes I think that you can just move about your days looking here and there and never even realize what is going on, but then there are other days when you see. When you see you have to ask yourself, I think, how it was possible for you to notice what is right in front of your eyes. How can you not be screaming? How can you not have questions and demands pouring from your lips like lava or venom? How can you sit there in dumb amusement with drool hanging off of your chin- as though this world were a t.v. show put in front of you for amusement…

“Oh that … don’t worry about that, it’s not really happening, I mean it couldn’t really be happening… could it?” ….Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain- its all going to be ok- Take your soma and be a happy,good little robot.

But it is real and it is happening… and more people are not screaming, but they need to be. They need to be.

I used to want my very own castle with a ten year warranty— and a multi-colored picket fence… so that I could worry about things that did not matter instead of all the stuff that did.

Odd– None of it mattered. Not enough to worry about. In some cases perhaps too much to worry.

Do we keep ourselves from doing what we really want to do?

This morning I was writing my journal….That I could invision this life that I wanted for myself, but that it was blurry. That this summer when I have some unstructured time that I would indeed get to see what my days would be like when it was up to me to decide how they flowed….?#&@!!? What….

Is it not up to me to decide now? If not me- then who- who is deciding? Who is this mystical being with which I have entrusted my days?

I want to be a child myself, but there is wood to chop and water to carry.

And what feels like a burden is truly a privelage.

But truly children, also, have **water to chop and wood to carry** They just think differently about it. And so perhaps- once again- I just need to think differently about it. More often than not it is not what I am doing that is the problem– I am simply in great need of a shift in perspective. And this morning I believe that I have indeed shifted.