"And in the end it's not the years in your life that count. It is the life in your years."
-Abraham Lincoln
A lovely Sunday it is August 12, 2012. This week, my home was sold to a nice retired school teacher. The economics of the sale are better than I could have asked for. This nice lady has the finances to buy my house without the use of a bank. In other words, she can write a check(!:) This is an excellent situation for me of course because the final closing and sale can happen at anytime I wish, be it two days from now or a month. With this in mind, I will be leaving for a trip to Philadelphia to stay for several days and secure my apartment. I will need a place to move to afterall. I will then return to Montpelier here in Vermont, give away or sell whatever I have left which I won't need in my new home, finish up my final packing, then rent a U-Haul truck and spend the better part of a day loading up all of my belongings into it. The next day I will drive the eight and one-half hours to Philadelphia, and to the location of my new apartment. The next day I (with help) will unload the truck and move everything into the apartment, then take the rental truck to a drop off point. I'll stay in Philly for a couple of days getting somewhat organized in my new place though not completely, as I expect this will take quite a while to complete until it feels like a home. (I am very particular about my surroundings and living space, so once I am in Philadelphia full time, I will lay out my apartment with my belongings, artwork, plants, furniture, etc. etc., in a relaxed manner until it works:) Then a very long train ride will bring me back up to Vermont again. I will stay a week (possibly....maybe less) to execute the closing on my house...meaning the final sale...say goodbye to some close friends, my house, my neighborhood, well...alot...get into my car with Kali, my precious cross-eyed kitty, and leave Vermont for the last time. I will no doubt visit occasionally as I still have close friends here, and they will visit me:) But the idea of Vermont, the home I have known for 32 years, will at the very moment I turn the ignition key and begin my new journey, begin morphing into that nether world of the mind we all know as memory. It will slowly, through time, become the past. Though I expect that for some time it will still be a central part of my "present" sense of time, eventually past and present will mingle in dreams and new experiences, opening up into an unknown future which will at some point in my mind, become in whatever moment...the present. My life in Vermont will, more and then more, quietly fade into time past, with so many memories playing over and over in still shots and moving images that are charged with feeling, though even feelings can dissipate in time. Already they are playing across my consciousness (and unconsciousness) like old silent movies on some small mental film screen, sometimes in vivid color, then in scratchy black and white or some sort of muted sepia, and at times there is just a wash of scenes, an overlay of undefined colors and gray. Have you ever wondered where the movie house piano player is who plays the music that accompanies those silent films....those silent memories in our own private theaters of the mind? Maybe, if we are alone and quiet, if we listen very closely to what is inside of ourselves rather than being distracted by the noise of what is "out there", just maybe....we might hear the thumping, tinkling, and tickling, of ivory keys hammering against the strings of an old upright piano, making silent memories come to life again with smiles, laughing, sadness and tears, happiness and regret, all with a deeply felt acknowledgement, an uncanny feeling that words can only fail to desribe, that all of it was, and is.....your life.
-Abraham Lincoln
A lovely Sunday it is August 12, 2012. This week, my home was sold to a nice retired school teacher. The economics of the sale are better than I could have asked for. This nice lady has the finances to buy my house without the use of a bank. In other words, she can write a check(!:) This is an excellent situation for me of course because the final closing and sale can happen at anytime I wish, be it two days from now or a month. With this in mind, I will be leaving for a trip to Philadelphia to stay for several days and secure my apartment. I will need a place to move to afterall. I will then return to Montpelier here in Vermont, give away or sell whatever I have left which I won't need in my new home, finish up my final packing, then rent a U-Haul truck and spend the better part of a day loading up all of my belongings into it. The next day I will drive the eight and one-half hours to Philadelphia, and to the location of my new apartment. The next day I (with help) will unload the truck and move everything into the apartment, then take the rental truck to a drop off point. I'll stay in Philly for a couple of days getting somewhat organized in my new place though not completely, as I expect this will take quite a while to complete until it feels like a home. (I am very particular about my surroundings and living space, so once I am in Philadelphia full time, I will lay out my apartment with my belongings, artwork, plants, furniture, etc. etc., in a relaxed manner until it works:) Then a very long train ride will bring me back up to Vermont again. I will stay a week (possibly....maybe less) to execute the closing on my house...meaning the final sale...say goodbye to some close friends, my house, my neighborhood, well...alot...get into my car with Kali, my precious cross-eyed kitty, and leave Vermont for the last time. I will no doubt visit occasionally as I still have close friends here, and they will visit me:) But the idea of Vermont, the home I have known for 32 years, will at the very moment I turn the ignition key and begin my new journey, begin morphing into that nether world of the mind we all know as memory. It will slowly, through time, become the past. Though I expect that for some time it will still be a central part of my "present" sense of time, eventually past and present will mingle in dreams and new experiences, opening up into an unknown future which will at some point in my mind, become in whatever moment...the present. My life in Vermont will, more and then more, quietly fade into time past, with so many memories playing over and over in still shots and moving images that are charged with feeling, though even feelings can dissipate in time. Already they are playing across my consciousness (and unconsciousness) like old silent movies on some small mental film screen, sometimes in vivid color, then in scratchy black and white or some sort of muted sepia, and at times there is just a wash of scenes, an overlay of undefined colors and gray. Have you ever wondered where the movie house piano player is who plays the music that accompanies those silent films....those silent memories in our own private theaters of the mind? Maybe, if we are alone and quiet, if we listen very closely to what is inside of ourselves rather than being distracted by the noise of what is "out there", just maybe....we might hear the thumping, tinkling, and tickling, of ivory keys hammering against the strings of an old upright piano, making silent memories come to life again with smiles, laughing, sadness and tears, happiness and regret, all with a deeply felt acknowledgement, an uncanny feeling that words can only fail to desribe, that all of it was, and is.....your life.
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