Well, hope all had a Give Thanks that We Had Firearms, and the Native Population Didn't Day. I love American holidays, donchaknow.

We had a small gathering of household members and extended "family" for the traditional meal. I was the odd man out in meal preparation and such, so I shared by writing and delivering the following festive Thanksgiving invocation:

"Bless all in this house, and peace onto all intelligent beings, which of course doesn't include George W. Bush. Today we give thanks , especially thanks for antacid and post-meal naps. But today we should offer greater thanks for the wondrous in our lives. We should give thanks that American election ballots aren't scratch-and-sniff. We should give thanks for Liberal Studies, since so many of us can't do the math. We should give thanks we know that The Almighty, Praise Be, has a sense of humor or how else could we explain politics, society, and John Tesh. I could enumerate many things to be thankful for, but in the end, the best thanks are reserved for the fellowship here at this table, and for the hope that such togetherness will continue for us all the year through, and spread to all others."

Third day parental money free. If that sounds like an addict ticking off his days of sobriety, the comparison is purposeful. It's getting hard to cope right now, the emotional atmosphere of the house seems radically different than when I came up to visit that first (and only) time. I don't know how to explain it. It's this sense of pervasive disunity, making me feel like I am living alone in a house full of people living alone. I'm trying not to ride myself hard, since my own headtrip could be correlating and magnifying small threads of household trouble. Maybe it's the offshoot of an unrealistic expectation that I would feel immediately at home when I arrived. Yet, I'm not so certain it is me. A couple of the housemates seem to only be here because they lack anywhere else to go, and are treating the house as some waystation. Since I've been here, some regular visitors come and go at their leisure, more concerned with using the house as some rec center. The Woman (what I will be calling "The Friend from Seattle" since that doesn't seem to fit now) is having an heinous attack of mental overload, and can't even speak. She and I had to communicate on the wipeboard in the kitchen earlier, and even her therapist is worried about here right now. I feel so at a loss, being forced to cope with big problems when sharing living space with other mates, when I'm still working on coping with the regular small troubles. I worry too, that the Woman's overload is due to too much change around her, and somehow I am indirectly and unintentionally responsible, that I should have waited for her to adjust to the other household changes to move up in the Spring. Am I in over my head?
In the end, I can do is repeat that insufficient statement, "I don't know."

Didn't get much accomplished on my first full weekday, to be honest, but I did plan to take it easy this first week. It's a pragmatic response, since this week is also a holiday week, and Christmas work gets rolling after Turkey Day. Then too, it was so quiet since only the woman and I were in the house with the rest doing their part for the furtherance of wageslavery. Okay, two of us and many cats who like climbing all over me when I'm out of my room. I'm still processing the schism I feel between where I am and how I feel about it. I wonder if it is an expression of emotional shock endowed by the impact of actually carrying out one of my plans for independence. I don't know how many cockeyed plans I created went down in flames before even leaving the earliest stages, and even the handful of best laid schemes didn't get much further along. At a point, I had totally convinced myself that I would keep making plans to keep my sanity, but I wouldn't have the odds of an ice-sphere in Gehenna of actually ever pulling one off. Like I said earlier in this blog, I've wanted this so badly, that now that I have it I am at a loss with what to do with it. I want to stop feeling like I am just visiting, and I should be pondering what I should do when I return to SF.
Not having a TV with cable is probably messing with my schedule the most. I know that I measured my schedule by the TV listings, but here, I'm finding that televison proved to be a tighter means of time control than a clock. I'm ripping through my DVDs as if my day is imcomplete without watching bright and shiny images on the screen. The fun bit, is this is the beginning of awareness of the aritifice I built for living alone under my father's patronage.

I've called it a night on packing and it'll be a couple of days before my computer can be networked. I'm currently surrounded by people playing Dungeon Master 2 here in the house computer room, so not much is going on newsworthy. Okay, sure, I'm just waiting more for my sheets to dry than taking time to reflect on the deeper meaning of my move. But then I can philosophize over what's on the back of a cereal box, given the mood. It's just hard to match the words to the moment. I'be been chasing this dream so long, that now that I have it, hell if I know what to make of it.

"The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, and do as one pleases."
- William Hazlitt

Kosher Pork comes to Seattle. Yes, I made it. I am here. Please, please, no applause. Thank you. I'm still damn punchy after a fifteen hour drive, and thirty-four hours without sleep, even after being dead to the world for twelve hours last night. Apparently, I was found in my empty room, drooling on my large stuffed bear (given to me by my ex-boyfriend) and put to bed. Then I got up for a bit only to sleep again, drooling on my bear, but this time with a proper pillow and some blankets, on the floor, so I could suffuse the new space with my smell and comfort the cat. (He is now known as the shaved cat since I took him to the groomer before I left and they had to shear off nearly all his hair to get rid of all his matts and tangles.)
What can I say. Move week was something else. I'll probably blog the grand adventure of driving the U-Haul from SF to Seattle so as I get my own computer unpacked, running, and networking. Stranger days are upon me.

I'm off to bed, but this was a good day. I deposited my last paycheck and I am three hundred dollars above my top expected moving budget. Okay, well not that good. I did screw up and check into my medical insurance too late.
In the end, hard as it is to imagine, I really think I might pull this off.

"Tseng Tsu said, 'Every day I examine myself on three counts. In what I have undertaken on another's behalf, have I failed to do my best? In my dealings with my friends have I failed to be trustworthy in what I say? Have I passed on to others anything that I have not tried out myself?'"
- Saying Three, Book One. The Analects of Confucius

Just for the sake of objective factuality. I'm not technically moving into a house of pagans. I was placed on notice on this. From now on, allow this as poetic licence. They're actually just really nice heathens.

I should be writing in this blog more. I'm holding a lot in right now, tightly grasping onto myself in the fear of losing it before I manage to get to Seattle. Last night, I woke up in the middle of the night with a monster migraine, bad enough to bring tears to my eyes. Anymore details than that, you probably don't want to know. I managed to sleep the migraine off into the early afternoon, giving me enough time to start making my sandwich for work, and schedule with two women and their truck to haul away my junk on the Thursday afternoon before I move, and pack the U-Haul on the Friday morning I move. This in two weeks.
I had a panic attack.
A real humdinger of a one, too. Hyper-ventilation. Nausea. The Shakes. I mean, the works. Imagine the pure delight of trying to call off from work while I was trying not to throw up while talking to management. I laid on the bed, repeating, "I will not lose it. I will make it to Seattle." in mantra-like fashion for just under an hour. But somehow, that worked. Then a hot shower and a comfy t-shirt did the rest. Well, most of the rest. I'm still edgy, and I doubt I could be in ten feet of another person right now.
But my friend from Seattle is right. I wouldn't be freaking out so badly, if my neuroses weren't threatened by the possibility of progress. And the last several freakouts were like this one, timed within minutes after I committed to some concrete stage of my move. It's hard to know that I expected it to be this hard, but not understand how it would be this hard. That I would be very nervous, yes. That I would feel like the National Icelandic Irish Tap Team would be dancing on my nervous system, no. I can't say that I'm not worried, that the next one might not be so bad that I won't lose it. But I am the Battlin' Buddha. We'll let it ride.
Anyway, I can't lose any days of work. But Dad did come through with the full November stipend. Which I wasn't sure he would do. I better not think about that too much. Not the full month. That this is the last month stipend I will take from him. I'm sweating. Oy. This is going to be a long two weeks. I think I'll have some Coke, something resembling food, and lay down now.

By the way, The Bolinas Proposition G passed. No one wanted to hurt Dakar's feelings.

Bolinas Puts Good Karma on the Ballot

Bolinas County Proposition G:
"Vote for Bolinas to be a socially acknowledged nature-loving town because to like to drink the water out of the lakes to like to eat the blueberries to like the bears is not hatred to hotels and motor boats. Dakar. Temporary and way to save life, skunks and foxes (airplanes to go over the ocean) and to make it beautiful."

I still remember when my Dad was reluctant to send me to UC Santa Cruz, because California was the Land of Fruits and Nuts. Weirdly, he was right in some cases. Mind you, if he sent me to the University of Alaska, Muglalookawooka Campus on the tundra, I'd still have come out as gay, and found a free-thinking Inuit.