Giving It All Up In The Storm

There is a severe thunderstorm with heavy gusts going on outside.  Inside these walls and under this roof, there are sleeping children, a nervous dog, humbly glowing night lights, and me.

When a boat is sinking, or a plane is falling, don't people in the movies chuck the goods in order to save the lives?

        Throw that crap overboard!  DANG!                  

I had a look into the future on the 50 minute drive home from work this afternoon, rushing to be on time for Samson out of headstart.  I was early.  And I had a great interview with myself concerning the (then) past dispersal of my material possessions.  In my mock dialogue, I was telling someone all about the decision I had made to live simply, all this after chewing off just the first 50 pages of The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne of the Simple Way - one of our first stops.  Everything he wrote so far in that book has been already swimming around my head for a decade, but because I tried the whole marriage (martyr) thing and then the whole job thing and then the whole going-back-to-school-to-be-a-nurse-since-I-already-have-a-degree thing and the almost married again thing.  .  . I kept putting simply living, living simply, love and service on the side burner as a cool thing that was worthwhile once I got everything else established and working out for me, for me and the kids. . . That was also what Claiborne was saying - looking for the wrong thing in things.

Like when I smoked cigarettes, I would decide in the middle of an expensive pack of Amercian Spirit organics that I was quitting for good, but would feel guilty letting them go to waste.  But guilty over giving them away.  What to do?  The only reasonable compromise was to smoke the rest of the pack myself - of course!

How do I get rid of my TV and the petty knick knacks in my house?  Tv's are awful - once you buy them, they are endless polluters - do you know where they go once you trash them?  This doesn't really explain, but it's a good little bit of insanity on the part of the World Bank - and you can guess by the title where most electronic garbage ends up.  .  .
http://www.counterpunch.org/summers.html

All that aside, I'm thinking of this house - three bedroom, 2 full bath, living room, dining room, large kitchen, large laundry room that used to be the garage, out buildings and free-standing garage.  All our 'stuff' here makes it our space, our comfort zone.  Tonight Samson made me literally bury him with stuffed animals.  I try to go through their animals but they're all so darn cute and memory-invoking.

I remind the kids out loud only to remind myself, that in two and a half months we'll be living where?  I ask. . . "on the bus" comes the monotonous replies every day.  But who likes to shop for simplicity?  Oh dear June, hasten your hour, for that hour will be the only remedy for such a weak woman who needs to aleviate the guilt of having so much Stuff with assuring that all that Stuff gets used, has rightful ownership by one who is more active in it's uses then I have been.

I will save the piano and the bunk beds.  And the thousands of photographs I have from back in the film days.  Boy, what a lot of crap to dump to get this ship moving.

The day we drive away from this beautiful house, is the day we will learn that home is with each other.

And a shout-out to an old acquaintance, Pulitzer-Prize winning (and judging) photographer John Kaplan, who has made an amazing auto-documentary film about his journey through some serious cancer and ending with remission.  You can order a free copy (100% free)
here if you've been touched by cancer.  I'm very happy for him and his family - this guy's stuff has always been amazing.

One more thing about today - watch the movie Catfish  - that's what I did tonight after writing to Chaco's.  Seems like the physical bus conversion is holding space while I transition inside for more contact work.  Sometimes it all seems like wheels spinning in the mud.  Or gas draining out of a tank onto Wal-mart's parking lot.  Refer to earlier posts to make any sense.