epiphany

Pumpkin Hunting

Last weekend, Drew and Lisa took me to a pumpkin farm where we selected our (still-uncarved--yes, I know it's already Halloween) pumpkins.

Additionally, the Pumpkin Farm houses several animals in a petting zoo setting.

I have no idea who the little boy is, but his sheer joy over the bunny was astounding. While other children were holding it, he would reach in and rub his head on the rabbit's fur. One adult nearby warned him, "It's a bunny, not a pillow!"

Finally, he held the bunny for himself. As he knelt with his new furry friend, he continued to rub his face in its fur. Suddenly he looked up in shock and cried out, "It went wee-wee on me!" Their relationship appeared to sour at that point, and several minutes later I saw him romping in the pen with the sheep and goats.

First Impression

I just got back from watching Finding Neverland, one of the most beautiful and painful films I've seen.

Swallow the Moon

Crossing the Aurora Bridge on the way home from work tonight, I saw the moon hanging large and clear just above the shadows of the Cascades. But a slight section of the disc was missing from its lower left. I thought this odd and wondered if it might be the beginning of the lunar eclipse I had heard someone mention.

When I arrived home and looked at the moon again, I knew that the eclipse must indeed be in motion. I cooked my dinner (reheated spaghetti), turned out most of the lights in the house (neither Drew nor Lisa is home yet), and sat down to watch the moon through the window by the table. After supper, I turned out the remaining lights and moved outside.

The last bit of brightness disappeared at 7:23 by my watch, which jives with what I've now read on the internet. Judging from the arch of the earth's shadow as it slowly ate the moon, it will be a good while before the light once again shines in the darkness. But still, even with a planet's shadow across the moon's surface, there is light And the darkness cannot overpower it.

When I was a child, I remember my parents dragging me out of bed late one night to watch a lunar eclipse. If I recall correctly, we stood on the rocks of Pebble Beach in Door County, the sounds of Lake Michigan chewing on the shore. I didn't understand the excitement of what was happening, and I didn't understand why I needed to get up late at night to watch the moon. I do remember feeling frightened as the moon turned red.

Tonight I watched the moon alone, hearing the singing of cars on the freeway two miles distant and the occasional interruption of a closer vehicle or neighbor's dog. I haven't taken time to be quiet and watch and listen for quite a while. God and I had a chat. Light does shine in the darkness, though we cannot comprehend it.

Moving

I'll be moving into my new home of the next nine months sometime next week. It's a nice house in a quiet residential neighborhood. One of the four current tenants (all of whom go to my church) is moving to Los Angeles on November 1, so they needed a new housemate to help pay the bills. I already knew one of the guys there. They told me that they as a group are fairly quiet "except for Saturday mornings," which is no problem for me since I'll probably be up long before any of their Saturday mornings begin.

The house is only a mile or two from my current home, so I'll still be in the greater neighborhood. The lease ends August 1, so I'm not stuck in one place for too long.

All Woke Up and Nowhere to Go

Every once in a while I wake up really early in the morning. Normally it's because I have some new music or a story running through my head. If it's persistent enough, I'll get up and write it down. For example, while I was in grad school, I woke up with a full blown opera running--music, lyrics, everything. I wrote down as much of it as I could remember as quickly as I could remember. I still have the pages somewhere, though they aren't on any sort of pressing "to-do" list.

Well, this morning I woke up shortly before 4:00 because of an unpleasant dream. It wasn't scary or anything, just unpleasant. Apparently I woke myself up pretty thoroughly in order to stop it, because I still couldn't fall asleep at 4:30. Since I don't have music or a story or anything brewing, I decided I might as well get up and go running, something I've been trying to get back into doing regularly. I'm all dressed for it--running pants, sneakers, sweatshirt, inhaler. But it's raining at the moment. Being glasses-dependant, I'm not one for running in the rain.

I've been thinking about my glasses-dependancy ove the last few days. I often use my glasses as an excuse not to do things, whether I voice it or not. Do you want to go waterskiing? No thanks. (Thought: I can't see without my glasses, and I don't want to risk losiing them by keeping them on and falling.)

We're going to Noah's Ark. Do you want to come? Umm--no thanks. (Thought: For one thing, I don't like taking my shirt off in public. For the other, I won't be able to see, and I don't want to get my glasses wet.)

When I was trying to decide about doing a martial art in China, my glasses were a major holdback for me as well, although I overcame that by figuring it would be quite a while before I actually got into a situation where I would have to hit another person or have them hit me.

Yesterday one of my coworkers who does ski patrol on the weekends invited me to come with him and learn how to snowboard. My immediate response was, "I don't know about that," which almost always means, "No, I don't like the idea, but I don't have a good excuse or reason why not." As I thought about it over the next few minutes, I considered all the bad things that could happen to me (another problem I have). Sure, I might break my neck, but that would mean that I'd either die or be in the hospital for a while. The biggest concern came down to my glasses--what if I tumbled and lost them? What if I broke my glasses? Then what would I do? I wouldn't be able to see at all!

Maybe it's rebellion against myself, but I went back and told him that I want to learn. I'll wait until my medical insurance kicks in, for sure, but I want to learn. I don't want to be trapped by my lack of vision anymore. Life is not much good if you don't actually live it, and God can take care of my glasses as well as he can take care of me.

That doesn't mean that I'm going to jump up at every opportunity to do something different. Old and engrained ways of thinking may never completely change. But I don't want to be held back by physio-mental barriers.

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and to forget to live."

I'm going to go see if the rain has stopped. Even if it hasn't, I might just go running anyway.

House Hunting

I've been traipsing about the city yesterday and today looking for a place to live. Drew and Lisa have been wonderfully kind to me, but since I have an actual income now and am starting to receive my paychecks, it's time to get out on my own.

I've only had to look for a place to stay once before--the last time I moved to Seattle, in fact. Then I was pretty limited on my choices, not having a steady cash flow. Now that I'm a Productive Member of Society, the vistas have opened significantly wider, and with them, the complexities of Choice.

I can actually consider what neighborhood I want to live in. That has been narrowed down to Ballard (near church and the Locks), unless a really good deal comes up at Phinney Ridge (near the dance hall) or Alki (on the Sound overlooking the Olympic mountains) or possibly somewhere else.

The next problem choice is do I want a roommate or should I live alone. Having a roommate cuts costs significantly. Also, it would give me contact with human life outside of work. Since I tend to keep to myself, a roommate could be a good thing for me. On the other hand, a roommate could get in the way of my projects and planning, and he could be noisy. Noise and I are not friends.

Assuming I don't have a roommate, I then have the choice of getting a one-bedroom apartment or a studio. I definitely lean toward the one-bedroom idea, although I did look at a really nice studio this morning. Studios cost less, possibly saving more than a thousand dollars over the course of a year. However, a studio would make it substantially more difficult to host guests or any sort of get together. I think I could partition up the studio I looked at this morning fairly easily, but it could still be a little tight with guests. Another thing to think about regarding one-bedroom versus studio is furniture. I have have none. Furnishing a full apartment would be much more expensive than furnishing a studio.

There you have it: the connundrums of first-time apartment hunting. My goal is to be in my own place by the beginning of November. I'll let you know how things turn out over the next couple weeks.

Spam Almighty

I just got rid of twelve blog comment spams. Do any of you other bloggers know how to block these jerks? I'm not all that interested in advertising casinos and online gaming.

There and Back Again

I spent the weekend in central Oregon visiting my friend Brian. He celebrated his 30th birthday a couple weeks ago, and his wife decided to set up a surprise party, with me being part of the surprise. This was my first free weekend in a while.

It's a six hour drive, almost exactly, from door to door. Since I-5 is the main (only?) corridor between Seattle and Portland, traffic is quite heavy almost the entire way. A significant portion of that route is primarily city driving even though no city lies within sight. Once in Portland, you transfer to I-84 for a few miles, then follow the signs for Highway 26 "to Mt. Hood" through a neighborhood. It seems odd to me that the main highway from Portland to central Oregon has no easy connection to the interstate, but such is life. There are a lot of things in Oregon I find strange.

Saturday was rainy until a few miles past Mt. Hood. I couldn't see the mountain at all because of the clouds and drizzle. But the far side of the range leads into high desert. Rocky land sleeps under crisp brown grass and wild groves of juniper. I have to think that the people who took the Oregon Trail must have been desperately disappointed to discover the truth behind the land of their dreams. Of course, once (if) they got past the Cascades, they would probably have been thrilled with just about any sort of green vegetation. Of course, if they were into ranching, the land would have been perfect for them.

While I was there, the daytime temperature was a pleasant upper 50's/low 60's. We had a heavy frost Saturday night, but Sunday warmed up nicely as well. Sunday was completely clear, and I had a good view of the many snow-capped mountains lying west of Redmond. Mt. Hood was out for the entire drive, and I even saw Mt. St. Helens (though I missed the steam plume). That must have been one impressive mountain before it exploded.

Saturday night I went to a square dance. Brian and Veronica took lessons earlier this year and have been out participating on occasion. I, of course, was very interested to see an actual square dance, particularly since my exposure to it has been entirely through movies or television. Although the calls and some moves are similar, square dancing differs significantly from contra dancing. Whereas one could just walk in and get the general idea of a contra dance through participation, square dancing definitely requires either a long exposure to the genre or lessons. But it was fun to watch, and I'd be interested to learn. Square dancing is also quite vocal, with certain responses to various commands from the caller. The most unusual one involved a group of old men and women quacking.

Anyway, it was a fun weekend. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing my friends again and spending time with their family. It was nice being back in a rural small town setting, even one vastly different from my own home.

Swing Your Partner Doe-See-Doe

I've been getting a good amount of exercise the last couple of days. I started running again, and after my runs, short though they be for the moment, I do the full stretching routine from my Chinese kickboxing lessons. Additionally, my bus arrives downtown about forty minutes before work starts. Since the weather's been nice, instead of waiting around for the transfer bus, I've been hiking and meandering up the hill to my office. For those of you nay-sayers who think that the words "downtown" and "hiking" shouldn't appear within the same context, let me point out that at Madison Street in Seattle proper, every block heading east increases your elevation by four or five stories, and that goes on for a good six blocks or more. You will be puffing if you move quickly.

But last night was the best workout of all. Ever since last summer's Folklife Festival, I've become enamoured with folk dancing. I've hardly done any, but it fascinates me. As I pointed out yesterday morning, I discovered a website connecting people to various folk dance organizations in the Seattle area. Last night I made good on that site with my first (and probably not last) visit to the Emerald City Contradance, an organization meeting every Friday night about ten minutes from my current residence.

I've never square danced, but I'm guessing that the square and contra dances are brothers, sharing well-known terminology like "swing your partner" (spin in a circle), "promenade" (walk the lady across the line) and "doe-see-doe" (easy to do but hard to explain). We newbies (maybe ten or so) showed up for lessons at 7:00. The dances proper started at 7:30, and I would guess that more than a hundred people were out swirling across the floor by 8:00. Dancers ranging from teenagers through senior citizens filled the room with laughter, clapping (which I was told is a Seattle thing) and sweat. We took a ten or fifteen minute break at 8:30 but danced until 10:00. During the first half, the caller walked us through the new patterns before the dance started. But after the break, she said she considered us all "experienced" now, and she started calling new moves mid-dance: "Listen, listen, four-hand star."

I'd read that community dances, particularly these pattern-based folk dances, were a commentary on society and reflected the structures of community life. You choose a "partner" with whom you stay throughout a dance. In the course of the dance, you interact with "neighbors," the ladies and men partnered around you. In a big weaving network, you eventually interact with every other set of partners and every individual in your line, whether that's five or fifty. But you always remain with and return to your own partner.

My own "social" observations include the necessity of interacting. If you sat along the side and just listened to the band (an old-style folksy, Celtic-y group last night), you would never figure out what was going on or how the dances work. The only way to learn is through participation. Some of the moves and dances definitely tell a story. The ladies seem to do a lot more "socializing" than the men. One dance had a move called the "gypsy stare." You've been dancing with your neighbor of the opposite gender, and for the gypsy stare, the two ladies from the group of four walk into the middle and circle each other, staring directly into each other's eyes. When they show some attitude, it's hilarious and conveys the message of "keep away from my man!" Interestingly, although the ladies from two pairs interacted quite often, the men rarely did and never with as much familiarity as the women.

Anyway, it was a grand evening of fun, well worth the price of admission. I'm going to try to talk some other friends into going with me next time. And I have a feeling there'll be plenty of next times.

Gotta Dance!

Oh happy, happy link!