- On Sunday, I made a Gwish (not really a goal but more than a wish) to be on the road. On a very tiny tour. And here I am. Thank you, world of moving parts that came together so I could do this.
- About five minutes away from my uncle’s land, you get hit by this wave of peacefulness.
- I used to think it was all those giant trees.
- But it’s more this: entering my uncle’s world, where everything is steadier, gentler, deeper.
- Hit by a wave of peacefulness? Not really the word because there is no force involved. You are not required to take part in the peaceful. It’s just there. Breathe it in if you like. Or not.
- I would not describe myself as a dog person. But as the car winds its way up the driveway through the trees, and Bobby and Gus make themselves known (Bobby barreling out in full force and Gus observing), I am very much a dog person.
- They used to be a bit suspicious but lately they are always excited to see me. It is a lovely thing to be the object of great rejoicing and enthusiastic welcoming.
- I like the way my uncle doesn’t turn on a light until the outside light has faded completely and we’re in darkness.
- Gus followed me into the bedroom to thump his tail several times next to the bed.
- Next thing I knew it was morning and I could see him from bed, sprawled outside on the deck, looking at me with one eye.
- There’s this awesome sign at the Playground that one of the Rallions (Carey? Probably?) made.
- It’s taped to the official boring capacity sign that lies about how many people the Playground can hold, and it says “But the MAYHEM CAPACITY is much higher!” This is a very true statement.
- In the world that my uncle inhabits, the capacity for delight, wonder, silliness, calm and spaciousness are so significantly higher than anywhere else I’ve ever been that it kind of blows me away each time I encounter it.
- I belong in this world.
- This is a very new kind of feeling for me. It is not what I know. Belonging? What does that even mean? But yes.
- My uncle and I picked blackberries and plums from the garden. He ground some teff flour. Tea was made with various forest-ey things that we found.
- It’s funny because this road trip tour thing is actually for a business purpose and a roller derby purpose, but it’s starting off so unbelievably relaxed and quiet.
- Yesterday at this time I was on a bus in Portland. There was an adorable flirtation happening between two twenty-somethings They agreed to meet up at the cafe where one of them hangs out, sometime in the unspecified future. But you could tell it would be soon.
- Then the bus driver announced that she was a minute and twenty seconds early to the stop and was going to run into the store and pick up some things.
- I stayed attuned to the bus-ness of the bus. I always talk to the bus when I’m on the bus. Secretly.
- And now I am attuned to myself so that I can attune to the tree-ness of the trees and the quietness of the quiet and the breakfast-ness of the breakfast.
- Then off to the rest of the tour. Notes for the Book of Me. Shivanauttery and roller derby and lots of happy yelling.
That’s it. Play time.
Deposit a note from your own road (or not a road) if you like.
Or maybe you have a bus story.
We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. We make room for everyone else to have their own experience, so we don’t tell each other what to do or how to be or how to feel. Spaciousness, permission, safety, amnesty, etc.
Jessica Rabbit kisses to the commenter mice, the Beloved Lurkers and everyone who reads.
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I want to be Uncle Svevo when I grow up!!!! Please!!!
36 hours ago I was in the quiet mountains and now I am back in the big city hustle and bustle. I am on the road to two new jobs, a temporay one that starts tomorrow (arrgghh, my holidays have passed way too quickly!!) and one that will start in a year’s time. I want to be like Beppo Roadsweeper in “Momo” and just take my road step by step. And I need some islands inbetween for island time. The first island preferably this coming weekend.
Yep, that was me. =D
I was rolling around on the floor and I looked up at the “The fire marshal has determined the maximum capacity blah blah blah” and it hit my ready-for-a-nap eyes as “mayhem capacity”. (I actually got up to blink and check the sign to see if that’s what it really said. Because you never know.)
When I saw it was a real boring official sign, I could hear a giggling chorus of butt monsters voicing some opinions about the matter. I simply took notes. 😉
I have a few bus stories.
1. The bus where I fell in love for two days.
2. The Serious Cultural Tour bus that wouldn’t leave until everyone took a shot of acqua di vita.
3. The bus that won me $10,000.
4. The bus I couldn’t ride on match days.
5. The fairy tale deja vu bus.
6. The miniature bus that was built exactly to fit down the narrowest alley in Florence. Minibus! So tiny!
Oh, bus stories. Good and bad ones. I do love the bus.
This morning, everybody overslept. Maybe it was the greyness of the sky. Maybe we just all needed the sleep.
It was fifty minutes after the alarm went off, twenty minutes past actual getting-out-of-bed time, when the Wizard and I rolled over, stretched, noted the time, and went oh. Ten minutes before I was supposed to leave for my work assignment. I threw on clothes, ran a comb through my hair and a toothbrush through my mouth. Grabbed my pocket things (phone, wallet) and my journal and pen. Kissed the Wizard*, who was still dressing.
Went to the Mercurial Maiden’s* room. “Have a good day, sweetie.” “…Mmmf mmff, mmmmfmmmmf.” “I love you.” “Mmmf mmmf mmf mmmfff, mmmmfmmmf.” Then, through the haze of drowsiness, she made a heroic effort at intelligibility: “I love you, Mommy.”
Went down to the Samurai’s* room. “Have a good day, love.” Sleepy, bewildered: “Oh, you’re leaving already? I’m sorry I overslept.” “It’s okay, we all did.”
Sometime last fall, we began the practice of rising early (at six or six-thirty, depending on schedules; believe me, for us, that feels very early) and having breakfast together. Before that, I very often found myself in the position of kissing sleepy people goodbye. Come to think of it, we all did, at different times. Sometimes the Wizard had to get to work before any of my appointments. Sometimes the Mercurial Maiden had to catch the school bus before any of us stirred ourselves; she’d fix herself some cereal, read a book, and say goodbye. Then I’d be the one making Herculean efforts at coherence: “Have a good day, sweetie, are you wearing a coat? It’s supposed to be cold today.”
A year ago, I’m not sure I would have believed that I could get myself out of bed before 7AM on a regular basis. I spent a lot of time saying I would, and then when push came to shove, not wanting to do it. When we all decided to do it, though, it became a commitment, and things changed.
I like the newer rhythm of breakfast together. Sometimes we’re cranky and get on each other’s nerves, but that’s life, and usually we don’t. It’s a good start to the day. Even so, when I got to re-visit a previous rhythm this morning, it felt oddly endearing and nostalgic. Kissing sleepy people goodbye makes me feel trusted, and loving, and loved.
(There: a few field notes from me. 🙂 )
*The Wizard and the Samurai are my two partners. The Mercurial Maiden is my daughter.
This is so funny… I just took my son to a bus safety presentation thing, to prep for Kindergarten. He liked the bus itself, and it was weird to see him drive away on it (short “prep” ride) but he hated the assembly. Too many kids, too much noise. He’s HSP like me!
Weird, to see me in him. And just to see change happening so quickly.
I squeaked about it on Twitter, but will squeak and mrrr about it here too – thank you THANK YOU for the replacement I didn’t expect! When I commented about the broken mug on one of your older posts, I was not in the LEAST expecting a replacement to be sent. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU to you and all your crew! I’m so grateful to be here 🙂
Road Trip !!
I’ve been traveling so much lately I forgot how much I used to enjoy the sitting, the in-between-space, the watching of other people.
I have only a few bus stories, all situated in Spain where the buses are airy, comfortable and the fastest way to travel.
The time I dramatically said goodbye to the boy I’d walked the streets of Barcelona with for three days, after he talked about the ‘lost in translation’ movie and said ‘like us’ and kissed me in a night club and came with me to say goodbye and said ‘stay’ instead and I left, got on a bus to my friend’s birthday in Madrid after which, of course, my wallet got stolen.
Also that other time, another year, after I’d backpacked slightly too adventurously, slept on a picknick table at a bay across a small city and woke up to see the lights of the bridge disappear into mist. I’d never been so scared. I got up, marched across the bridge, waited for less than an hour and got right on the 5:30 morning bus to Madrid, feeling like a queen.
Havi, your uncle sounds like the most terrific person. 🙂
Kathleen, now I wish I was in your family so that I could have a cool title too. lol.
Do you think someone could make an Essence of Svevo-land and send it to people in distant places? Such as me.
Oh wow. A bus story. That would be THE BUS STORY from 39 years ago. The numb-out, searingly painful bus ride, where my insides were on the verge of bursting except they were distracted walling up to keep the shattering pieces of my broken broken heart from falling out and getting lost. The ride that turned up, in a NaNo draft I was writing three years ago, in the line “He brushed a kiss next to her ear and she turned and climbed aboard. She didn’t look out the window. She didn’t wave good-bye. She wasn’t there anymore.”
Haha, my head is actually a bus!! A crazy, noisy, chaotic school bus. Full of fuzzball monsters, scary monsters and other various versions of me. Including ME me and my big sister Frank (which is a metaphor mouse name for My Authentic Self (because those three words in that particular combination make me want to puke which is particularly not good right now. Urrgh). So: Frank. Much better.)
ANYWAY, they are called the Cast of Characters and they often fight over who gets to sit in the drivers seat. My practice the last ?ten? years has been to try and put ME me in the driver’s seat MOST OF THE TIME. It’s a process right?
I have gotten much better but there a few characters who do still insist on sitting RIGHT BEHIND ME and muttering/ shouting/ sobbing/ screaming hysterically about how I’m doing it all wrong and WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!! Sometimes they still kick me out and take over for a while…
Frank is pretty cool though, she’s who I try and hear over some of the other rabble…
Sometimes the windscreen of my bus gets muddy and it’s hard to see what’s actually happening out on the road. That’s the other part of my “practice”, to try to keep the windscreens of my perception as close to actual reality as I can. Yeah… That too is a process.
But busses! Yes, I love it. I have a bus. It is noisy…
*sigh*
I have a thing about fountains. And tonight I was leafing-lingering through the start of Matteo Pericoli’s The City Out My Window, and I just bookmarked pages 12-13, because Mario Batali’s description of his view ends with, “It is beauty, it is paradise, it is frenetic and calm. Ahh, my park has a new face now and the damn fountain is finally at rest where it should be.” And that made me laugh and want to tell someone else about it. (And yet, I can’t really make out the fountain in question in the illustration.)
And the image on my desktop is that of fountains at the US Open (also in NYC), from a woman I’ve not (yet) met but of whom I’m fond. Somehow it seems fitting to be reading about the fountain beyond Batali’s window while her fountains occupy the space behind the windows on my desktop, and to be amused by something Batali said while I sit at my own kitchen counter in ratty shorts and an old Jazzercise shirt, very slowly eating my own good dinner. And feeling glad that I don’t have to go anywhere tonight, physically or mentally.
This made me happy to read.
Favorite bus story:
I was about 15. I had the window seat and an 80+-year-old woman with a cane had the aisle. I had the window open and was glorying in the then-delicious Boulder air. The old lady said Close the window!
While I was moving to obey – seriously; was not going to argue – she WHACKED my leg with her cane.
If anyone saw or heard her do it, they were as dumbstruck as I was.
I still giggle every time I think of this.
I first met my husband while riding the bus that goes from the Denver airport to Boulder.
He sat next to me, we got to chatting and flirting, when we reached my stop he asked if he could take me to dinner sometime.
On our 3rd date I found out that he was parked at a park-and-ride about 5 miles back … but rode til the final stop with me since he hadn’t gotten up the courage to ask me out yet.