Day One: The Cowden Spacewalk 2010
Day one begins early...too early...after a night in which we created a new drinking game designed to rid us of the stock in the liquor cabinet that hadn't previously been consumed. The game, something we decided to call “Janky Rose” after a rotten bottle of Rose's Lime Juice discovered in the back of said cabinet, was something like a sadistic sendup of “spin the bottle” and involved being forced to down numerous shots of such delicacies as dandelion wine, Southern Comfort, and even grappa. Needless to say, by the time the game finished at 3:30AM and the six or so remaining guests had located pass-out spots on the now furniture-less floor, we had set ourselves up for a tremendous subsequent morning of lifting, loading, and saying goodbye.
When 7:30 rolls around and I manage to extricate myself from the makeshift air mattress “bed” J and I had put together in our inebriation, I am struck by something immediately: I no longer live in this house. I'm sort of squatting in my own place, a place from which I have deliberately exiled myself and my family. Until July 6, we are homeless. I also start to think of the impending journey across the country as sort of a space walk, albeit one without any sort of tether. Our 26-foot U-Haul truck (which Liam has come to refer to as the “dinosaur truck” because of the strangely friendly-looking velociraptor painted on its side) and following Mercury are like our jet packs as we try to leap through the void from one space station to the next. If we fail, we end up tumbling endlessly through the blackness—in this case, that would be central Kansas.
It also occurs to me that some of the reactions I've gotten from people when they find out about our move may, in fact, have nothing at all to do with where we're moving. (I've been getting a lot of “New York City?” chanted in much the same tone as the cowboys in the old Pace picante sauce commercials when they found out that “cookie” had served them salsa from the Big Apple and right before they decide to hang him for the transgression.) Instead, I realize that they're responding to the fact that we're moving at all. In these times of great struggle for our economy—i.e., no one anywhere has a goddamn dime—folks seem to have chosen to sit still and wait it out. This, alas, is not our style. We are trend-buckers, I suppose. We could really care less what economists tell us about how to live, or to wait on Congress to let us know when it's safe to pursue the life of which we've dreamed so long. So we're on our spacewalk—together, the four of us. Setting up an outpost on a distant moon, awaiting those who may be bold enough to follow. Or not. Well, at least Molly, who will join us for a month beginning the third day of our Brooklyn residency.
We spend the next four hours dividing and conquering—J running all over town turning in computers and keys, seeing friends, etc., and me marshaling our home-based squad as we seek to pack the flat-screen TV and other remaining items into the back of the dinosaur truck. No one feels well. We are hung over, exhausted, and less than thrilled about the prospect of living without one another. A “new normal,” my mentor Carol had offered. “That's what this is. Just a new normal.” The problem is that there was never really anything wrong with the old normal. We have family—parents--right down the street. We have dozens and dozens of friends. Esteem and respect in the community. Free shots at Naggy McGee's. We have it made.
Which is why we have to leave. Comfort and fulfillment are not necessarily correlated. In fact, in our case, they seem to be mutually exclusive. That is, the more comfortable we've become the less fulfilled we've felt. This disconnect leads us to draw an unfortunate but unavoidable conclusion: We have to a) maintain the level of comfort and security we enjoy, even if it means giving up the possibility of being as personally/creatively/emotionally/blah blah blah-ly realized as we can; or b) choose the opposite. We choose option B. And this is how the dinosaur truck gets filled.
You sure talk purdy...
ReplyDelete