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Cleveland picnic – foto by Smith

This starting life anew in a new-old land while weather’s cold, wet, gray and I leave my car lights on and the battery goes dead is not what I’d recommend for fun and peace of mind.

A friend had delivered some free furniture last night and as I got out of the car I forgot to turn off my lights so we came back to a dead car. Called a few folk before finding a friend home and we sat in the dark wet cold shivering for 30 minutes waiting her help. But when she got there, none of us could make the battery jump work, so she brought us home and the car’s still there. Try again today in daylight so we can see what we’re doing. My skill set seems to be missing anything normally considered male, like fixing cars and anything else mechanical, commercial or social.

Things are progressing. Bought a mattress and box springs to sleep on and had them delivered. Bought a used couch and a used recliner and conned a friend into helping us carry them up three flights of narrow steep twisty stairs.

A couple friends have brought by free tables, chairs, dishes, chest of drawers, so we’ve the minimum to start our new nest life. People are extraordinarily generous and giving with both their time and possessions.

Today we get internet installed, and day after tomorrow we get the gas connected and actually move in.

We’ve replaced my old computer, so now I’ve lost all my old comfortable tools like Word with its spell checking and I’m operating in new Vista operating system’s never never land. Spent all day yesterday putting 50 gigabytes of my old computer data 2 gigs at a time on my memory stick and transferring it to my new machine. That 50 gigs represents my past 10 years of art life. And of course the new computer is totally different in key layout and touch sensitivity and displays all my old foto programs in totally strange unworkable layouts.

Basically right now everything is unfamiliar, uncomfortable, unknown, and expensive. Money’s going out like it doesn’t want to be around me anymore.

I haven’t been blogging past three days and find I rather like it. This daily soap opera of the life of Smith is less interesting than I’d believed. I’ve little positive to say and no fotos to post. In Oaxaca I had to beat the fotos off with a stick, while here I have to hunt them down. Unfortunately I miss the daily process of writing, blogging, responding, so will continue to blog more days than not… eventually I may even actually have something to say.

The one value of my daily blogging these past 33 months is a real-time record of the daily vicissitudes in the journey of one adventurous nomadic creative art/poetry couple. Figure 80% of what I write is fit to wrap fish in, but the other 20% has some veracity and validity. Lady and I have been a couple 3.5 years now, and all but the first nine months is blogged online with fotos, a rather unusual situation couple-wise.

This starting over in a new place gets old when you do it 55 times in 31 months, but at least this time we’re starting anew in a creative poetry/art community where we know the people, the rules, and the lay of the land. Once we move in and I get back to making art and writing poetry, my angst will dissipate.

I’m basically an eternal internal optimist who periodically feels overwhelmed, down and depressed by the actual facts of life. Usually a good night’s sleep bounces me back, but it’s been over a week since I’ve had one so the gloom and body sickness are spreading doom in my head. I just want this endless transition to be over.

I want to get back to being me, but I gather I have to fight through me to be me again. Gotta tell myself to get out of my own way.


Cleveland sky high – foto by Smith

2 Responses

  1. I’ve missed your blog these last three days. Don’t stay away too long. If you dont have your car started yet, give me a call, I’ll come over and try to help.

  2. I always liked your Clephotos; I predict those will start jumping back into the camera when the transition is less raw.
    (I missed my daily read/visit, too).

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