Gerrit van Honthorst: The Matchmaker (1625)
"How utterly unsurprising these continuing surprises seem."

My future takes care of itself in ordinary times, but this time seems somehow extraordinary. It's not every day, for instance, that I contemplate HeadwardHomeward in any way that might seriously threaten any present status quo. I've daily dreamed about heading in that direction for longer than the past decade without buying any packing boxes, until now. Now, I seem to have set into motion some irreversible actions very likely to propel The Muse and I somewhere different, somewhere familiar, and the forces seem increasingly inexorable. I won't be napping through this one. From one perspective, I have been actively stalking this very future for years, but from another perspective it seems more likely that this future has been Stalking me and has finally found me. This feels haunting, extra-volitional, as if it were happening to me more than that I might have been making this happen. The time has apparently come.

To complicate our exit, a Spring blizzard has been stalking us all week. It started as rumors of an especially wet low front sliding south from San Francisco. Once it hit the mainland around Los Angeles, data collection improved and the modelers set to work, one forecasting a possible fifty inches of wet snow here over the upcoming weekend, while others predicted more modest amounts. TV weather reporters have been spending the bulk of their on-air time explaining their science's imprecision, offering ranges and probabilities, but as the week progressed, they came into agreement that we'd see an epic snowfall measured in feet, not inches. They could not yet know precisely when it might start, but early Saturday morning seemed increasingly likely, with heavy snowfall probably continuing until early Monday morning. Our place seems centered in the bull's eye of the target, the blizzard clearly stalking us. It doesn't matter what I might have been planning for my immediate future, I will most likely be right here, probably running out of something suddenly critical to achieving a timely exit. Stalking encourages fretting.

The days before the storm arrives find me calmly gathering supplies. I stock up on enough braise-ables to keep us fed for a month: pork neck bones, lamb shanks, with winter veg and wines to accompany. I buy more boxes without calculating whether we'll really need them and set TheSecondCar in the driveway ass end into the garage door to serve as a storage unit for our box inventory. This opens half the garage for packing and for The Muse's last minute attempt to construct a cover to replace that unfortunate carpet over the soaking tub's access panel. This project's been serving as my excuse for not packing up the tools yet. A point comes when further preparation's moot. Convergence clearly coming, be it snowfall or leaving, I set down my clever defenses to actively acquiesce. I'm prey and I know it, and I come to welcome my demise at the hands of these changes. Predators hold such powers over us.

That first winter of our exile, a freak snowstorm blanketed the DC region where we'd relocated, dropping thirty inches of wet snow upon an utterly unprepared metropolis. The Metro couldn't run above ground for a week, and I shoveled waist-deep passages, enough to make the street. I even dug out the car, though I knew for certain that we would not be going anywhere. I thought it all part of an adventure, unaware that our exile would hold us absent for eleven more years. The adventure continues. The snowstorm stalking us now seems like a bookend, an utterly unsurprising near ending to a story still unfolding, our future plotting most of it for us. I accept full responsibility for the quality of my experience, reframing as necessary but retaining ultimate accountability. Still, I insist that my future seems to be Stalking me this morning. The snow, the HeadingHomeward, both pieces of a twisting plot line keeping things interesting and surprising. How utterly unsurprising these continuing surprises seem.

___________________________________

A certified psychologist would probably insist that I entered the bargaining stage of HeadingHomeward acceptance this week. My experience has felt more like bartering away than trading for advantage. I've tried justifying several different ways, remnants of denial still evident in my presentation. I even blamed some of my feelings on my parents and my upbringing, which only renders me typical and unexceptional. These stages have their way even if wolves raised you. There seems little anyone can do but keep moving, for even moving, even HeadingHomeward, holds an innate inertia rejecting its own momentum. I end the week grateful for the Stalking nudging me along.

I began my writing week in clever denial, positing a personal theory in MultipleHomeTheory. "Some pieces of me remain wherever I say I left."

The most popular posting this week investigated what I'd genuinely believed to be a universal experience that turned out to be rather less common in FeelingLikeHome. "My life seems most compelling whenever I'm pursuing some indescribable."

I sensed the final vestiges of my denial stage in LettingGo. "My clock's turned arrhythmic. It tells time without any longer keeping it."

I discovered a needed sense of liberation while reflecting upon turning burdens into FreeShit again. "They'd lost their magic for us but regained it the moment they exchanged hands."

No denial can long sustain itself as I tried to describe in BoxingIn. "Our house of cards is finally collapsing back into its packaging again."

I decided to start putting one foot in front of the other, making Small_Distinctions rather than BIG decisions. " … making SmallDistinctions encourages a greater acceptance that whatever happens was supposed to happen that way."

InLastTripToKansas, I concluded my writing week by posting a parting shot, a perhaps defiant screed insisting that the place we're leaving didn't lay a hand on me, though, of course, it did. "Sooner, now, we'll be gone, and the threat of revisiting the wrong side of the tracks will leave right along with us."

Next week will serve as our last full one here, gods willing, so I expect some whimpering, perhaps even a little elevated self-pitying to emerge in my writing. I anticipate much bargaining with myself, never a fair exchange. I will attempt to keep the content uplifting, if only because I suspect that I'll be needing considerable uplifting myself. As plans collapse into actual doing, rough edges emerge. Odd shapes never intended for boxing encumber progress. We'll most certainly run out of boxes, hopefully before we run out of patience and long before I exhaust my appreciation for your continuing presence here. Thank you!

©2021 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #HeadingHomeward, #PureSchmaltz