Going to the public library this morning to resume the alas dead-boring task of indexing the local paper; they haven't found anyone else to volunteer to do it.
Then noonish, going out to the ocean, aiming for high tide. Gray whales are all over Puget Sound, so the migration must be in full spate. Surely one or two would like to feed or rub or whatever it is they do at First Beach...
Will resume unpacking tomorrow.
I've been buying things at the Goodwill, whenever A. happened to be home and could come do a pickup on the find of the day. And the neighbors just sold me a chest of drawers and a double bed. So this apartment is comic at the moment, a second set of belongings and furniture in the middle of an already fully furnished apartment.
About to start loading the car with the don't-want-to-lose-track-of boxes. Hope to keep the promise I made to my knees, to not do carrying of weight up the stairs.
Bye bye beautiful happy sublet. Hello tomorrow.
Beginning to get the idea that if they are feeding there, high tide is when to see them. Or anyway that's when they feed off Whidbey Island. Lots of sightings of known individuals, the Puget Sound resident gray whales, already being reported. So some of the migration, at least, is already this far north.
On Tuesday, left work early to head over to Port Townsend, to talk and lunch with someone from my Zen Center life, and someone he knew in days there earlier than mine. Twenty-five years at least since I saw J. Leaving work, explained to R. that I was going to rendezvous with someone I hadn't seen in 25 years. Since she is 26, she found this datum completely indigestible. 'Just wait,' I said. 'Eventually you'll be my age and it will happen to you.'
Talk, lunch at the food coop, bookstore hopping, coffee break, waiting for ferry for J. to head back to Bellingham. At the metaphysical bookstore I got a string of prayer flags for the deck of my new apartment. (Forgot to mention, it has a deck...) This was my first visit to Port Townsend and it's easy to see the charms. Arty, literary, old hippie.
Tomorrow I go to Seattle to spend the night with G. and his family. I have seen him in more recent years, for one thing visited on my first NW spy trip when I was deciding where to move to; but the era in my personal history that G. belongs to, communal spouses and karma yoga and intercommunal newsletters and like that, reaches back OMG more like close to 40 years.
Gulls, one must say, not seagulls. M. corrected me vigorously when I said seagull. There's no such thing, she says.
I am now and for the next 11 months the tribal librarian of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, courtesy of their IMLS grant. The prospect of being able to confine the job to the half-time contracted for is dim: I was there four extra hours yesterday while the tribe's 2-day-a-week contract techie tried to make our catalog & circ program play nice with the network. And must go an hour early on Tuesday because we are making a brief visit to the Head Start staff meeting at 8 AM, to invite them to bring their three groups of kids (NOT all at once!) for Story Hour.
Which we don't yet know how to do, but no matter.
That I am going to the river this morning; that the river and its future have been on my mental agenda since I came here; that the people of the river have offered me this position which helps me continue with my librarianly identity in this new place... these are not entirely coincidental facts, and yet, they needn't have as much to do with each other as might appear. I'm thinking how to change the subtitle of this blog, or not; and whether and with what flavor to blog about my adventures as a novice tribal librarian.
Later: I've been reading about Antarctica for a long time. I used to think that if life had a rewind button like a VCR, I'd roll it back and do glaciology instead of dropping out to become a hippie, and by middle age I'd be a senior researcher camped out on Ice Stream B, with graduate students to bring me hot chocolate in the mornings... That was vague, but this is specific: if I had one do-over pass to spend in my life, I'd try harder to go to Antarctica when I left the temple in 1992 or so. I applied for a job with whomever was the support services contractor back then; they never replied. Oh, ok, I thought; and set about getting a correspondence bachelor's degree so I could get an MLS so I'd have geographic mobility in my profession. So I didn't go to Antarctica, and I also didn't move when I got my degree, and here I still am for another 48 hours. And I will never see the Ross Ice Shelf, it's irremediable. The big regret of my life. When I lose track of why I am moving now, I think of the Ross Ice Shelf. I am NOT going to be old in the desert and wishing I had moved back closer to the ocean. It might not work out but I have to try, hard. Watch me. Here I go.
Waiting anxiously for M.P. to bring me my box number and key. Then I can send out email to everyone with new address and phone, begin putting in change of address cards, etc.
Even now, any ideas I may have I need to save for my last seven or eight posts on the library's blog... Then what? I'm not sure I even know how to speak for myself. Or who might care to listen, if I no longer have a place of work.
