A new day... a new routine?...

Don't mind if I do! If today is any indication of what my future weekends may look like, consider me very pleased!

One thing is I'm getting up earlier. My schedule is about 2 hours ahead of what it was in NY. Time will tell if this sticks. I kind of hope so because so far it's quite nice this way.

Made a large cup of French press coffee and breakfasted on an English muffin with apricot jam. Lovely way to start a relaxing Sunday.

For the second time this week, I proceeded to the "porch", a 4x8 foot perch off the front door. It was gloriously sunny and the sun was warm though the air still had a nice coolness about it. The spinning wheel came with me and I sat spinning for an hour basking in the yellow sunshine, peacefulness, and bird song while meditatively treddling and drafting. Oh, it was heaven. No blaring stereos driving me indoors as had been the case in NY these past few summers. It feels good to be back spinning. It's been over a month.


I concluded my front porch time with a bit of reading (Thich Nhat Hanh) and went in to sit with the cello for an hour and a half. I worked hard on Bach's Prelude from the First Cello Suite (or is it more accurate to say that the prelude worked hard on me?). It was shaping up to be a beautiful Bach day. The piano was next and I spent the entire time with Bach's first Partita.

How very satisfying this morning had turned out, and the afternoon unfurled as the perfect follow-up to this blissful a.m.. I drove into Plymouth (8-9 miles) to hear Bach's Mass in B Minor and let me say unequivocally that it was brilliant!! On a par with what I've seen and heard in NYC, and I've seen and heard a lot. How very encouraging. So happy. Man! What a piece of music! The NH Master Chorale put on a top-notch, exemplary performance. I was blown away. It was also nice to see a packed house. Two hours of this sublime music works on me and I had a bit of a release when I got back to the car. Practically bawled my eyes out. Don't listen to anyone who says Bach's music isn't emotional.

If you are not familiar with the Mass in B Minor, here's a clip of the Kyrie. There are several full versions of the Mass on Youtube.


I got home and baked a yummy vegetable pie. It's from a wonderful vegetarian cookbook: Babe's Country Cookbook. Look it up. Wonderful recipes. Tried out a few local micro brews while I was preparing dinner. The Pemi Pale Ale from the Woodstock Inn Brewery is definitely worth making note of. It's on my list.

A perfect day.

Outdoor pictures... flora...

Yesterday I strolled around the yards and snapped these pics. Have made some wonderful discoveries among the flora round about the place. The less wonderful aspect is the amount of cleaning up to be done. Some of the shrubbery is in need of trimming and thinning. All in good time, can't get to it all over night, after all! I discovered the location of the prior owner's garden and have a good mind to start double-digging it and putting a few things in this year, easy veggies. I was going to wait on that, but why not plow(!) ahead?

Blackberries! Very excited about this. The patch needs clearing out of old canes but hoping to get a goodly amount of berries out of this:


Some smaller structures are strewn about. Here is a cold frame in pretty good condition. Definitely salvageable. There is also a chicken coop and another structure for housing small animals.



I was told by a friend that this is some sort of 'burning bush' and should be quite a spectacle in the fall. Looking forward to it:


A patch of chives around the corner of the house. I'd like to relocate these if possible:


Very overgrown forsythia. A bit of work required here. The forsythia in lower elevations are already in full bloom. At 1200 feet I guess it will take another week or so for these to be abloom:


A holly. I hope it's female and getting cross-pollinated with a male from somewhere:


Some irises. I love irises. Some cleanup needed here as well:


This has me ecstatic! A lilac, yes! I hope it's purple, but as long as it is scented I don't really care what color it is. There are a few lilacs on the property:


Another favorite: Lupines. They're popping up in various locations:


I can't keep saying 'this one is my favorite' but I will! :) Perhaps I'll simply state that all flowers are my favorite? Scented flowers are at the top of the list though. This one won't be scented but it will be a show:


A wonderful discovery this is! Rhubarb!! Thinking of the possibilities: pie, jams, ... Yum, yum, yum!


This somewhat non-descript, not-especially-attractive rotunda is a mighty clump of wild roses! (I can't help but exclaim at all these discoveries.) Heady it will be come June. Absolutely divine:


Discovered this little patch of thyme not far from the chives. Area must have been part of an herb garden:


For good measure, a partial view of the front yard:


I went down to the town clerk's office yesterday and since "Sculptured Rocks" natural formations is only half a mile from the center of town I decided to pop on over and have a look-see. Fascinating and exciting. Next post, with pics.

A few pics of work-in-progress...

Here are a handful of pictures showing how the place is shaping up with my things in it... (click picture to enlarge)

One corner of the kitchen with my new--perfectly sized!--table and chairs which I picked up at a thrift store for pennies. There are several thrift shops around here:


Here is what the kitchen looked like. I did not care for the raspberry and yellow and greyish tan scheme.


But with a minimum of painting I got something that suits me. Unfortunately, I splashed my sample swatch right on one of the doors--before deciding I would keep them in the raspberry color. Should be able to match the color and fix that up in a jiffy.


The previous owner's bedroom:


Which I turned into my music room:


This is the southeast corner of the living room:


And the other side of the room:


Still to come are pics of the dining area and loom area, upstairs bedrooms which won't be painted for a few more weeks at least, and some pics of the grounds.

I was very happy and excited to see a Cardinal at the birdfeeder this afternoon. He's the first I've yet seen here. Have had visits from Titmouse, Mourning Doves, Blue Jay, and Finches so far.

The "carport" structure, it has been decided, will be torn down and the wood repurposed to build a house for my birds. It's a bit of an eyesore at the moment IMO, and I'd rather have lawn in the space it is taking. So that is a large-ish project for this summer.

Off to the town clerks office tomorrow to inquire about garbage disposal and recycling(?), transfering my vehicle registration and license, and other mundane matters!

Moving in ...

As mentioned, there was magic in the trip back to NY after dropping the birds off in NH. About half way down the journey I saw a big, bright, and beautiful shooting star. It was the second biggest and brightest I have ever seen. The biggest being the year before last as I stood standing at 7th & Bedford waiting for the bus to come along. That was during one of the annual meteor showers--I forget which one. Huge and bright it was, speeding across half the hemisphere before burning out. But the one on my return trip last week was simply beautiful and the final magic touch on those exhausting few days.

It's been a whirlwind! Oh dear! I am, just now, starting to catch up to myself. With most boxes unpacked and the downstairs areas painted I am moving out of limbo and into home. And it feels good! How can I describe the peacefulness here? The silence at night? The serenity of bird song during the day? Bliss? That's a pretty good word for it. No stomping feet upstairs, no rumbling from out the window, no groaning from the oil furnace in the cellar directly under my bedroom. No, no, no. Beautiful peace.

There have been a few adventures since arriving. I locked myself out of the house last Sunday morning! [chuckle, chuckle]! There were several boxes in the entry room next to the kitchen and I was desperately looking for my coffee maker. I unlatched the chain lock, and with a twist of the door handle went out to the entryway on my mission. The door handle I had also locked, the night before. You know the kind, they're often found on bathroom doors: Twist the little knob in the center of the handle and the door cannot be opened from the outside. Well this door is like that and I had secured it about 12 hours earlier.

Since it was a bit cool--the mornings here take longer to warm up--I closed the door behind me and continued my search. Alas, I couldn't find the coffee pot. Oh I do need my morning coffee! Had to give up, so turned around to open the door. It was locked. I'm used to these doors unlocking themselves when the handle is turned from the inside--which is what I did to get outside. It should have been unlocked. But it wasn't. What to do? My brother-in-law had the spare key because he'd been taking care of my birds while I tripped back to NY. But the car keys were in the house. I might have called him but the cell phone was in the house. Everything, except me, was in the house! And I had such good plans for the morning.

There seemed little else but to walk down to my neighbor who happens to be the woman I bought the house from. She's built a new house next door. Her son said he could probably climb in through one of the windows. It seemed like a really good idea the night before to go room-to-room to make sure the windows were all locked. Not so much now. He said the bathroom window was usually unlocked, and come to think of it I couldn't remember if I'd actually locked it seeing how it's on the other side of the tub. So he came up, placed the step ladder under the bathroom window, climbed on up and found it was locked. Of course. I'm usually pretty thorough.

My other neighbors by this time had come over to say hello. Where did they acquire their perfect timing? Lovely people they are though. One of the young ladies stepped up to the entry way and thought she could see that the music room window was not locked. I doubted it, but the ladder was relocated, scaled and ... the window was found to be unlocked! Yes! The morning was saved.

The good news is I found my French press shortly thereafter. Also, I finally did locate the coffee maker, but by then I'd become hooked on the French press so it was a mute discovery!

Pics to come.

Here... there....

Here... in New Hampshire! Yes, the move is over. WHEW!

These past 2 weeks have been a blur of activity. So much packing, so much traveling, lots of painting, and finally, lots of unpacking. I'm dog tired so this little post is just to mention that I made it(!) and will have reports soon.

[Big grin goes here]

Magical

I drove the birds to NH this weekend. It was very difficult, intense, and in the end, magical.

It took all I had to go into their room Saturday night at 10pm to start rounding them up. The prospect frightened me. This has always been so when it comes to interfering with their lives. But one-by-one I snatched them up and put them in boxes. I'm sure it was stressful for them, but once I got started it went along pretty smoothly. They're pretty elusive little birds when they want to be and it was an effort to catch a few of them.

I had a couple escapees, and one would have been left behind had I not made a complete check of the apartment before heading off. There was much grumbling and flailing of wings but they settled down rather quickly when I turned the lights off. Almost the entire operation was carried out in the dark with the help of my flashlight, and given how boxes are strewed wall-to-wall around here as of late, the travail was accompanied by several bumps and stumbles.

I started at 10pm and thought it would take me an hour to get them in boxes. I didn't check the clock once I started--on purpose. I knew that if I did I could easily get frantic about how long it was taking. So I just kept focused, one bird at a time, and when finished, checked the hour. At that point I knew it would be later than 11pm--the time I had wished to leave town--but hoped it wouldn't be too much later. It was 12:30 am. Ah.... must accept. A couple of breaths, a scan of the apartment, and we were off. It was 1 am when the wheels were put in drive, loading the boxes of birds into the car had taken another half hour.

My sense of relief at this point was huge. I was just so relieved that all my birds were packed in the car and that we were off. It had seemed almost impossible in theory. A step at a time--a good rule to live by I think.

We were on our way! Made it to the BQE (Brooklyn-Queens Expressway) and had travelled only a half hour's worth when there was a flutter of wings about. Yup, 3 little birds had decided they weren't tired and had forced themselves out of their nest. Oh boy. (In addition to the large boxes I also had 5 nest boxes--with tenants--which entryways I had plugged up with towels. Not well enough.) These 3 adventurers were a family: Mom, pop and fledgling. The fledgling had just come out of the nest last week.

Oh boy! Mind racing, "Is this just a single incident or am I going to end up with a car full of birds fluttering about while I try to drive!?" Single incident seemed controllable, a car full would have been embarrassing and made driving impossible. Fodder for movies ala "Bringing Up Baby".

Well, luckily, it turned out to be a single incident and I shared the cab with 3 lovely little lovebirds. One of them, the mom I think, made herself a bed in the blanket I had on the passenger side front seat. I don't know where daddy perched himself, but the fledgling made my trip!! This sweet little creature, with a natural propensity to fear me, came up to the dash board and looked around for a while. His next move was the cross bar of the steering wheel and he sat there riding the tide of my turns left and right for a good half hour. I was enchanted by this point. S/he was acting just like a handraised bird, and of course, I thought of Annabelle. I guess a half hour of steering wheel carnival time was enough for this darling and he proceded to climb my shirt up to the back of my neck and perched there another half hour preening the back of my head. Truly awesome. And it felt great!

By now the whole ordeal had transformed into something quite magical. The traffic was light at that hour. The stars were visible. I was being caressed by one of God's little creatures and the car was, relatively speaking, pretty quiet. Just an occassional squirmish now and then. How often does one get the opportunity to make a trip with a flock of birds?

We arrived at my house at 6:20 am, right on schedule--adjusted for the late start. I had calculated on the way up that if we arrived around this hour, I would probably be able to crash on the living room floor by 8 am and could recover and revitalize for 5 hours or so. It worked out just so.

The birds are temporarily in the guest bedroom because I discovered when I got there that the door to the entry-way addition is only a screen door. The temp when we arrived was 28F. No, doesn't work out. So on to plan C for housing. They won't be in there too long. It is now quite a priority to get their own castle worked out by the end of June, I hope.

There was magic on my way back to NY tonight too, but that will be the next post. I will say, being here in the apartment without the birds is lonely and almost surreal. We've had some wonderful times here, we have. It's so quiet at the moment and I keep behaving as if they are here--such forces of habit.

It is an enormous, gigantic relief to have them moved. It almost seemed impossible, but here we are, and I experienced a night I will never forget.

It's a big deal ...

It's a big deal, this move. A major life shift. So I've been wanting to compose a quick re-cap--just a very broad outline--on these past 35 years. It's a selfish exercise: I'm doing it for me. (And it's long.) I need the catharsis and to bear witness to (i.e. remember) this big chunk of living. For almost 2 years I wrote "morning pages" every morning. That is an exercise from "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron (I totally recommend it). Think of this as a slightly more structured morning page exercise made public. (Morning pages are meant to be private and not re-read.) So how did I get where I am now? ...

I came to NY because I had to. I'm returning to NH because I want to. The NH I'm returning to is not the same place I left 35 years ago: NH now recognizes same-sex marriage. Hallelujah! They're on the forefront. Who would have thought!?

The "reason" for moving here was to attend acting school. I attended for a short while, up to when the money ran out and I had to get a job. Looking back, I think it's just as well that it didn't work out.

My first years here were tumultuous, almost unbearably so at times. In my first year I came out of a very dark closet. So dark and deep. And it wasn't without a struggle.

When I was born, in 1956, I was a criminal--so said the law. Homosexuality was still illegal in 1956. The Stonewall Riots occurred when I was 13. It was not something we heard about. It was impossible to be out, and like so many others I lied and pretended. Sexuality, let alone homosexuality, was not discussed. But I knew who I was--inside--by the time I reached my mid teens. I had read a description of "homosexuals" in a book and realized, "That's me!" The only difference was that I didn't feel "perverted" or "deranged". I just felt like me. But I knew way before then about myself from the way I felt when I saw an attractive man. I always thought men were much more interesting--libido wise--than women. During my years here I have come to know of other gay men and women who I grew up with--and although we were classmates and friends, we never knew this aspect of each other. One of them also moved to NYC shortly after I did.

It cannot be overstated just how harmful the closet is. It is a devastating place, and by the time I'd reached my late teens I was in a very bad way. I had to do something. And that--minus all the details--is why I moved to NY. It wasn't easy. I knew no one here, and my first residence was the YMCA near Lincoln Center. That was short-lived, thankfully, as I'd been approached by a classmate about sharing an apartment in Germantown on the Upper East Side. I lived there a while--up to the breaking point: That night when I realized that if I didn't accept who I really was I was going to go insane. It was a cathartic and frightening experience. On the spot, I hurled myself out of bed and went out to a discotheque that I knew about. The Ice Palace, 57 West 57th Street. One where men danced with men, and held each other, and kissed. One that I'd been taken to once before by a kind man who had befriended me at church. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, these couples in love. I was one of a couple that night, for the first time in my life. He was Irish and ever so cute and handsome. And his apartment was in Queens, which is kinda funny when you think about it. I had my first intimate experience in Queens! And I was saved from insanity. The tumultuous times continued as I struggled to find myself and peace of mind.

The tide turned when I started a relationship with a very cute Texan working on his PhD in cinema studies at NYU. I learned a lot about cinema that year and we had a nice relationship. It brought some solidity and stability to my life. Alas, something was missing and I couldn't ignore it. That's when I started Bioenergetic Theraphy which is a Freudian offshoot with an emphasis on the body. It's a very interesting and intriquing theory and I read several books on the subject at the time. It came my way via a movement teacher at acting school. Curious about the exercises we had been doing I asked her what they were and she directed me to the book "Bioenergetics". I did 6 years of this psychotherapy. That was followed by 14 years with my "shrink" and he was pretty much a plain old Freudian psychiatrist. I cannot fathom where I might have ended up had I not undertaken this inner journey.

It seems to me the 80s were different in this respect: I didn't know anyone who wasn't seeing either a psychotherapist or a shrink. Perhaps it's simply that I've lost touch, but it doesn't seem as common as it was. Most thankfully, those were the days before medication become the panacea for all things psychological. No. I had a plain old-fashioned talking cure and I am ever so thankful for it.

During those years I found a solid job and read, read, read and learned, learned, learned. My love and interest in piano was reawakened and I tackled it in earnest. I stopped dating. Had to take time to deal with all the baggage I was carrying around. I call it the period when I was in the closet with the door open. Heehee. So I had a second coming out around the millenium. And I came out for good that time! But going solo during that period is something I've often reflected on with the realization that it probably saved my life. From AIDS. I knew many people who died in those years. I finally managed to get my own apartment when I moved to Brooklyn, and really settled in when I found this place I am now leaving. Eventually I took the advice of all my piano teachers and started teaching too. Learned how to spin wool and weave. I knew how to knit and crochet already--learned that when I was a teenager. My latest big adventure is the cello and I'm loving it.

And here I am, practically on the eve of returning to New Hampshire. Until a few years ago I had no idea what my future would look like. Now it seems clearer. I think I'm going to like it at my new house.