Room vs. Keely Prt. 2

For a few minutes I thought I was loosing the war in my room, but the tides took an unexpected turn and now I seem to be winning the day! Two boxes have been cleared and purged and all that's left now are to fill them with trash then put them outside, thereby leaving only what is needed to be packed! There are piles everywhere and it LOOKS like the room is winning, but I have two allies backing me; my hands and a trash bag.

    It's been a bit difficult to say goodbye to things I thought I would want to keep, but also a testement to how much I've evolved, in that things I was so desperate to cling to I can look at now and say 'yes, its time to move on'. While its hard to chose between this stuffed animal and that old drawing book, its also been a lot easier than I had thought. I'm sure I'm not the first or last person to have these feelings or to even express them, but I will say that I'm very proud of myself for letting go of things that three years ago I would never have considered leaving.

  In all honesty, my trip to Europe cleared me of really any ideas I had in my head that I need 'things', so to speak. I lived for a month out of a duffel bag, and when I came home to my very small closet like room I remembered looking around and thinking "wow, I really don't need any of this. Why do I have so much!?" If I had to, I probably really COULD leave almost everything behind without much regret and just leave with a car,a cat, and a friend, but I also recognize  the fact that having pictures and other such things are a good way to remind you of your past and how much you HAVE changed.

    So room, I'm sorry to say, you may have one the battle, but I will win the war. HAHAHA!

Optimistic List

  My days--even my minutes on occasion--are filled with thoughts of 'yay' and 'nay' about my move. So to put a more positive spin on it and sound less like a psycho whose had one too many mojitos, here is a list of positive things about moving to remember and to keep me from loosing it!

 -I will have my friend Dana by my side!

 -I'm not alone when I move up there! Ah the powers of the internet, roommates, and family friends!

 - I will get to make new friends!

 - Two. Story. Swing. Club.  SOOOOOO awesome!

 - RAIN! Finally, a reason for all my hats, scarves, gloves, and tea that I make/drink! YES!

 - I will be nearer to Canada! I foresee many a trip to a different country! 

 - I'm going to be able to finish my book there!

 - I will be able to actually COOK FOOD and not have some one roll their eyes/complain/freak out that food isn't coming out of a JAR. Yay for moving!

     These are all wonderful things that I'm going to remind myself of when I get worried. I'm very lucky in that I will not be alone, and if I really need 'grown up' help, Dana's Aunt and Uncle are always there for advice, even if they ARE two hours away.

The Great Beyond

Pioneer Square

   Or, more specifically, the Great Beyond past California Borders. I have two and a half weeks (but really, only two weekends) until I depart for Seattle. I'm at a constant uneven kilter at this point. Half of me is jumping up and down and impatiently counting down the days until I move. The other half will magically appear and remind me that I know very little about the city, and even less of what I'm going to do once I DO show up. Which then makes me feel a panic so strong that I ask myself  "WHY THE HELL AM I MOVING!?!?"


   Why AM I moving? I have friends here, and er...sort of a family--dysfunctional and deteriorating as it is--all lined up. I have Disneyland, Knotts, and the beach all within a twenty minute drive. I have warm weather, children I love, and even a job in a school that wants me to come and work for them. I have a life that seems pretty okay to me. However, I recall that the things that I most want in life, I can't have here. I can't grow, change, or make more of myself. I will never own a house--let a lone a condo--here in California. I can't have my own life. And for those reasons alone, I need to move.

    I admit freely that it DOES take me a while sometimes to adjust to ideas. For me, picking Seattle at the time was a great choice. But as the days get closer and closer I feel scared to know that I really am all alone. It's very much like the feeling I had when I first decided to move out at 19. Moving then turned out to be a good thing, despite the racing heart and panic. It had taught me more about myself than I would have learned staying at home. Seattle is just a bigger step. Its intimidating because unlike so many years ago, I will be leaving to a place where I don't know the city, the streets, or the people. On good days such thoughts make me itch to go explore. On bad days like today, it makes me worry if I'm really making the right decision, if I can really survive outside of California.

     The Great Beyond seems far away and all too close at the same time. I suppose the best I can do is take a deep breath and hope to the gods above that everything (including a friend and a drugged up cat) will fit into my car. The chapter of California is over, and whether I'm ready or not, I'm about to turn the page to a new chapter. But I'm ready.

 I think.

Room vs. Keely

  I have four weeks until I move. FOUR WEEKS. Do you know what that means? No? It means packing. It means cutting back on crap you don't need. It means--ugh--decision making. I hate playing favorites with yarn! I hate to part with any yarn or scrap of fabric that I might need in the someday future (but probably not really). So today after I got home from a less than stellar day at work, I walked into my room, placed my hands on my hips, and surveyed all that I ruled over, trying to decide where to start first.

   If my room were a country, it would be the landfill of the world. Or perhaps a hippie country that didn't get the memo that its not cool to leave everything on the floors of your streets. Either way my room is a disaster. I could give a teen a lesson in how to really make your room insanely messy. My bed is probably the cleanest part, as I usually pull the covers up because I love my quilts that I made laying on top of it, and like to show it off to myself. In reality, its probably a volcano waiting to explode. Clothes, yarn, fabric, knitting needles, books, make up, and here and there a knitted blanket carpet my floor. At least the mess is colorful and also soft right!?

     I SHOULD probably start with my books--since I have so many of them--but really, I'm just putting them in trash bags (much more space saving in cars than boxes), and what if there's a book I want to read!? I thought about the yarn, then realized it was going to take time (and lots of it) to decide which ones were going to be voted off the country of Keely. Fabrics are pretty well in hand, as most of them are in bags already and don't need much organizing. The thought of the two boxes in my closet from when I first moved back home called to me, reminding me I probably needed to throw away most of what was in there. But when it dawned on me that doing so meant more decision making I quickly fled my room to the safety of my computer, where the hardest choice  would be which Pandora Station I was going to pick.

    So now I sit here, procrastinating and amusing people at the same time, all the while doing a great job of ignoring the fact that I'm going to have to start packing--and therefor firming the fact that I will be moving in four weeks into the land of the unknown. My only consolation is that the land of unknown is the land of coffee, trees, and beautiful gray skies. So my first decision as president of my country called Room will be clothes and blankets. Because its summer now and I don't need half the blankets on my floor. Although they did make wonderful rugs!

     

Country Road Take Me Home

THESE ARE ALL PICTURES I TOOK

People often say that 'home is where the heart is'. But people also say that we're 'a product of our environment'. I believe both of these things equally. Some people are born or live in poverty, where a cardboard box serves as the dinning table, but love keeps the family together. Some live in apartments the size of shoe boxes, and others live in nice suburban condos and town homes. Throughout my life I've lived through many different forms of homes. But my first home, the home that shaped me, formed, and made me who I am today is Modjeska Canyon.

    It isn't a very well known place, even to people who live all of four miles away from it. It is tucked at the very foothills of a mountain range, and as a child it was considered so far out of the way that we had our own general store in case some one ran out of basic goods and couldn't get back into town (which due to only having one road, took about half an hour to get to the nearest city). But progress happens and now there is easy access to it through off shoot roads that lead directly to it--and cities have been slowly building around it as well. But Modjeska is still a magical place that gets bypassed since the neighborhood itself is so deep and well hidden by winding roads and Live Oak trees. But for those who do know it, its the most enchanting place in California.



    Modjeska has good and bad memories for me, ranging from catching tadpoles in the creek that snaked next to my house in the summer, to staying up till 3 in the morning at the local Biker joint while my dad sobered up from drinking and playing pool before sticking me on his Harley and driving me back home down the winding road perched on the side of mountain. But most of all, Modjeska holds for me the example--and even the bar--of what a good community is, and what living with and working with nature REALLY means.

Most people who lived there during the 80's were artists, musicians, hippies, free spirits, and occasionally an actual job holder. I recall more often than not, that I could go to anyone's house or yard and play with their animals. People (even now) raise a lot of animals, grow their own food, and add their own artistic flair to the homes, which are all individually made and preserved. But more than the homes, gardens, and animals, were the people themselves.




    Often times every one knew who I was--even if I didn't know them. They watched me even if I didn't know it, and my next door neighbor always let me and my sister enter her house freely and insisted that we sit in her chairs and eat cookie dough saved just for us before letting us go to her backyard to pick her blackberries. The neighbors that lived a few houses down were musicians, and on hot, lazy, summer evenings the whole canyon echoed (thanks to the mountains and trees) with their banjo, spoons, and guitars--along with any other musician who would amble by to join in. BBQ's were frequent and so were people who simply stopped their cars in the middle of the tiny main road to talk to neighbors. There was never anger over this, in fact I recall a time when that happened to my dad and the people who were both trying to come AND go, got out of their cars to join in the conversation and catch up! In the fall and winter the community got together to scare the children for Halloween, and had Santa stop by to deliver presents to every boy and girl at the Christmas party held in the Fire Station.

   My dad, while not always diligent in watching me, taught me many valuable things--some of them by simply not being around. It took me a very long time to realize the reason he never played with me during the day was because he was drinking, but I was very young, and busy playing in nature. I frolicked through the streets and trees completely safe, took care of my babysitter's horse (who sadly died when the river rose during a rain storm and dragged her horse and several others into the raging waters), and played with my dogs who were always on my heels. He taught me to respect nature,  that all plants had their own voices, that animals who hurt us did it not because they hated us, but because we frightened them. To be gentle to the earth around us, and through stories, to believe that animals could talk.

    Most of my summers were spent up in the hills unsupervised with the other children, where we did daring things like walking on a narrow wall behind the fire station, climb the ancient oaks that protected us from the  glaring California sun, and roam wild in the hills and mountains that  were probably more dangerous than we gave it credit for. Kids growing up in the area learned this first: "If you hear a rattle, stop and walk backwards slowly heel to toe". The other was to always have a dog at your side. You couldn't find a kid who DIDN'T have one. I had three, but two of them in particular were my shadows. They protected me, slept with me in the dirt, and taught me how to recognize if a sound meant danger or a rabbit. And more than that, they taught me that animals had personalities and thoughts and feelings just like any one else, they just communicated it through nonverbal behavior. It was this, I think, that made it so easy for me when I was older to recognize what people were really feeling.
 
These memories and more are what shape my opinions today. That community is when neighbors contribute to each other, share, laugh, grow, and support. That we do not have to destroy nature and try and rebuild it into what we think is 'perfect', nor are cookie cutter homes and manicured lawns the 'ideal'. That letting  children explore the world and nature around them without gluing them to you is vital to their growth, and that when you are alone, sad, happy, or over come with emotions, the babbling brook, bending ancient tree, and gravel road remind you that you have a friend in both nature and the person next door.

MY VERY FIRST HOME

    I leave for a new state, a new life, and new people in four weeks. There is a lot that I am not sorry to be leaving, but Modjeska tugs at my heart very much. Being so far away from the home of my heart is more painful that saying goodbye to my friends and family, who can uproot themselves and visit me. An entire forest and mountain can't. But I take with me my memories, pictures, and myths and legends of the land I spent eight happy years in.

    I learned many life lessons in the multitude of different homes I moved to, but Modjeska taught me the most important ones. Respect nature, listen to the plants and animals, take care of your neighbors, and always ALWAYS remember that to the 400 year old trees and 40,000 year old mountains, you are still a child of the earth that should frolic through their trees and fields.

             Thank you Modjeska, for giving me a childhood that was filled with magic, music, and love.