btms–>rants

I haven’t been writing. I haven’t been reading. It is, in fact, hard for me to measure that I’ve completely changed my life. But I did.

A recent xkcd reminded me of L. It is exactly what she would say to me, probably word for word. I suppose that’s what drew me here, but there is nothing really else to say about that.

I have been working on a tractor. I bought it off ebay, some assembly required. Getting it here from Massachusetts required a convey of two trucks and trailers, and still didn’t get everything. I may go back for the cab if he still has it. Matthew, my grandfather and I spent Saturday carefully attaching the two-ton backhoe to the nearly four-ton loader, then draining all the fluids and identifying the filters for replacement. At one point my aunt and uncle from down the road were up, my uncle from Winterport was over, both my grandparents and Matthew and I, all standing around “The Turk” as my grandfather calls it. Sunday I was replacing the fluids while my uncle used the chainsaw mill nearby and my grandfather winterized one of his lawn tractors, and I was quite pleased with my situation. I’m definitely where I want to be.

Sunday night I was restless. I told Kate if I was in Seattle I would have gone to the 9lb for a drink. Instead, we watched Star Wars and drank together. It’s different. Contra dancing instead of house parties. Community history projects instead of urban farming. But Kate and I are homesteading, and it’s great.

Yesterday morning, Kate and I drove up the hill to get the waste oils and take them to the dump. We found my grandfather looking over the tractor and Kate commented on how happy he was. This morning I finally got back to working on the brakes on his 1951 Chevy 6400 series 2-ton dump truck. Kate and I bleed the brakes again after I finally got good fittings and washers everywhere. Still, they weren’t as good as I wanted so I rebuilt the master brake cylinder using the rebuild kit I had bought just in case. It went fairly smooth and was fun having my grandfather around as well as he had done the same a few decades ago.

A few leaves in the backyard are starting to change color. The wind rustles up the rest of them as a light rain falls. As I walk to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, I look out all sides of the house; surrounded by trees. A stark change from living in the shadow of Boeing Field in Seattle, pausing conversations between the roar of passing jet aircraft. I consider hugging the house, but realize it is far too large for me to do so.

In a few hours I’ll be on a plane to Maine. I have a list of exciting projects to last the rest of my life there. P has mentioned multiple times, “you have such an interesting life.” I’m not sure how sustainable it is, but as M mentioned the other night, I can certainly afford it for the foreseeable future. Now, my room in Seattle is empty and old roommates are moving into it in a couple weeks. My childhood home in Surry awaits. Kate and I hang on the edge of discussing projects and plans in Maine. My family anxiously awaits my return.

Six years. Oh, so much. As I measure life in six month increments, six years is many lifetimes. Once I’m settled, J and I may continue talking regularly via skype. When I consider this, I’m reminded of our hundreds of hours of conversation. I just was reading an article about how our brains can be rewired to disassociate traumatic events from triggers by recalling them and then replacing the memories with better ones actively. This makes much sense to me.

I’ve only had a wink or two of sleep tonight, which can’t be good as I’m still recovering from sleep deprivation at Black Rock. Mom asked me what my plans were once I got home, and I told her to spend quiet time with Kate and catch up on sleep. Then, continue work on the garage. My anxiousness kept me awake, but now my body is trying to shut down. I’m feeding it coffee and Tums now. Within an hour, I’ll be on my way to the airport for a 5:15am departure.

Home. Or well, back in Seattle. Saturday I head home to Maine.

I adapt to another life in Black Rock. Living for weeks in the desert, eating in the commissary, showering in the shower trailer. Working in the dust, sleeping in the back of the Suburban, with occasional trips to get out of the city. A couple friends and I watched the Saturday burn from outside the city and a few folks without tickets to the event were shocked that we were out there by choice.

When I was leaving, F asked if P was coming with me and said that we were cute together. I couldn’t comprehend a response. With all the time that P and I spent together, it was a reasonable assumption to make. But what happens at Burning Man, happens in an alternate, nearly schizophrenic world. It doesn’t stay there, it isn’t separable. At times it seems to stay physically, but events still cause ripples outward in time.

As I stop and redraw my life; consider what paths it will take, I’ve been thinking about how different it could be, how circumstantial it is on my intimate partnerships and on their lives. I recall trying to convince L that I wanted to support her, and her misinterpreting that as my wanting her to “cry on my shoulder.”

This is the end of a period of my life in Seattle. 2011 has undoubtedly been a year of transitions. Having Burning Man form a corner of that change only serves to make it more abstract, with jagged loose ends comprising of threads made up of compassion.

What would life have been like if L hadn’t run off? Who knows. What if Burning Man wasn’t such a temporary life? Everything continues to underscore how complex life is, and find peace with that.

On a somewhat related news, I’ve been considering starting a charitable foundation. That just feels absurd, but I have the resources to do so. Notably, I’m only considering it. While I’m confident I could do so, I have to humbly laugh at myself for not watching TV instead.

When M called me her “ex-partner,” I had some internal doubts. Her lack of commitment, in fact her phobia of commitment, was the demise of our relationship. A conversation with Kate about the definition of partnership determined that building something together was key, and you can’t build anything if you can’t follow through. Perhaps some people disagree. I could see some “activist types” disagreeing whose goal is a utopia rather than simple solid progress.

I’m moving to Maine.

I haven’t known how to say this exactly, but as dates draw closer it is remarkable simpler. This weekend I head to Burning Man. I return around 9/6 and on 9/10 I have a one-way airplane ticket to Maine. Of course, I had a one-way ticket in March before my father died, but that was more of an open-ended deal and less of a move. I expect I will return to Seattle at Christmas to spend time with my Mother. If all goes well, Kate and I will both fly out for a bit, and then drive the Suburban and a U-Haul trailer back to Maine. So that may be when I’m really moving. That I have most everything I need in both places right now has made it confusing. Perhaps the biggest shift is that I’m planning on almost entirely moving out of my bedroom this week.

Why? First, nothing was made more clear by my fathers death than the mortality of my family. My grandparents are all nearing eighty, making moving back to Maine “someday” a non-starter. It has to be now. Second, it is the life I’ve wanted. Every time I’ve come back to Seattle from visiting home, I haven’t felt right. This has usually been dismissed by others as being the product of a vacation but that hasn’t added up. I miss the woods; not the woods where we all go hiking on the weekends and camp in the tents we bought at REI, but the woods that I wake up in every day and have the smell of fresh cut firewood. Third, an incredibly lucky bonus on my part, Kate. Some time ago I bet Tanya $20 that I would marry Kate, and I intend to collect on that bet. As a man who doesn’t ever bet more than a shiny nickel, my seriousness should be evident.

Kate is a huge part of my life, present and future. The romantic story of our past is cute as well, but elementary school was a long time ago. I’ve gotten past needing a label for my relationship with Kate, because all of them require caveats and additional explanation. This is appropriate, because you can’t tell one life from the other any longer.