Tortoise and a hare: on leaving, jars, and running

Ramblings after packing.

Tomorrow, with my bicycles, my dresses, my chopsticks, 8 bars of "cheap store" chocolate (I stocked up while I could), and all my other possessions, I drive across the state of Washington. I'm leaving the Pacific Northwest. I'm going to Idaho.

In some ways I am leaving with a hole in my heart; I did not expect to fall this much in love with A Place. Mount Rainier hugely present on rare days, ferns and unhurried rain and restful pines, endless color in flowering form (see Figure A), good coffee, communities who call for bike lanes. Not unreasonable temperatures in the winter.

Going To Idaho is the only part of my future I can envision at the moment. I am in the job hunt stage, but doing it rather as a floating thing....or a tortoise, with my house on my back (wait, that's not quite right: with all my possessions with me and in other people's houses). I'm going to Idaho because there is a church there who needs an Easter Week organist. And also I have a job interview at a soils/plant research instrument company nearby. And also Mr. India has a job there now.

Mr. India and I lugged boxes out of the attic and into my room, their contents flooding and pooling all over my carpet. Belongings! Decisions! What will come? What should stay? I don't have many things, but I find myself becoming inexplicably attracted to certain things (this Medusa lamp, for instance: I could buy it again at goodwill probably, but it was in my freshman dorm with me) and then all buggered trying to make decisions about them.

But this time around, this final leaving of my grad student guest house, I am feeling more free and unburdened. I am leaving all my jars (and let me tell you: I love storing everything in jars--to admire the color of lentils through glass, the freshness of loose leaf tea in a jar rather than a baggy): the funky one with the handle, the little ball jars that once contained my dear mother's jam, that curvy number I'd bought disgusting pickles in just because I mostly wanted the container.

I left them because I realized I gain as much gratification through the act of acquiring jars as I do in actually having them. The journey here is better than the destination. And certainly better than lugging them around all jangly in my Subaru.

Everything fit in that Subaru, by the way. Even though I did find three separate pairs of gardening gloves in separate places.

.......

Maybe I turn around and come back across the state. Maybe I continue forth and go all the way east. For the first time in my life I am actually at ease about What Unknown May Happen Next. 

So I am a tortoise. And also a hare. A hare because I have been running. Although not a fast hare, mind you. A floppy, panting, hair-askew-hare. This is what happens when one's bicycle has broken from Southeast Asia and one has become addicted to endorphins. 

I always used to look at runners as amazing people, doing insurmountable things; I could barely trot up our driveway without cramping up and becoming short of wind. I'd labeled it in my head as Something I Did Not Do, but even meanwhile envied the fleetness I saw in others, the freedom to flap and flow along, the lean muscly legs. Once I'd looked at the pipe organ in the same way, insurmountable and amazing (minus the legs).

I learned the pipe organ.

When I was in Thailand, a big celebration for Chinese New Year occurred. Cars were decorated with flowers, alters set up in all the yards, people drinking beer at 9am. I asked someone what all the fuss was about. "The Year of the Horse" it is. And I asked what that signified. "Auspicious for money," I was told, "and the year of the horse means: running."

I think I even got a little shiver when I heard that. Running.

And, because trying to overcome something challenging and painful can be very rewarding, I am running. Almost without fail I would be pinched through in my belly with a painful stitch within a few minutes. But Mr. India, all wise and marathoner, advised me to "be a little patient" and "just run a little slowly." Patient? Slow? Me?!?

But going out each day, just running bit by bit for a few weeks now, I feel astonishingly better. I ran up a hill yesterday without a stitch and enjoyed a view of Mt. Rainier, buzzed on endorphins.




(oh hum, I think I'll need to take a bike trip again quite soon, or else my blogging--which I feel compelled to do anyway--shall end up rambling all quotidianly such as this)

(I've decided "quotidian" needs an adverb form, so please pardon that)