Packing: 100% on the go

...and then, she begins to dance. She's practicing. A sense of mastery comes out of her, like a strong shiny shoot, because she's been watching carefully and she knows the shoot is going to flower. And she is going to dance, dance hungry, dance full, dance each cold astonishing moment, now when she is young and again when she is old. ~Anne Lamott

You're hard to get a hold of, he says. He's told me this before. And on cue, anticipating my coy defense, he continues: It's not a bad thing, you're out there on the firing line. Living life. 100% in the game.

I start to protest, to offer a rebuttal. To use my words somehow to make light of but still identify for him the 12 whole months of silence and alone, of nothing, doing nothing but sitting quiet, listening, crying dreaming writing screaming praying, alone. Way out there on the river, way out there with just Choptank, way out there with no TV and shoddy stolen Internet and often the ringer turned off on my phone. But he cuts me off again.

No no, I mean I know you go home and do your thing and find your silence and take your time to regroup and find your self, but you do it so you can get back out there to do your thing. To get back out there in the game. You like to go, you like to do you like to be. You dont want anybody who's gonna hold you back or down. It's awesome.

I am stopped, stilled a moment within which says a lot because we've been drinking coffee like the caffeine gods are about to go out on the picket line, I mean we've been slamming the stuff like shots all morning. And this is why I like him, why I've always liked him, cuz he's a witness--good at seeing people for what they are, for all of who and how they are. And he calls it like he sees them.

He's a bone collector. A gatherer strong inside and meant for good, deep things. He's always looking for food and women and song and money because he too is hungry, hungry as hell, like me.

We spent the day together while I should have been packing but sometimes that is the best thing you can do: shine the funny light on your otherwise darkened bones. Be with the people who breathe the life over you, whose air energizes your sinew and wraps you in muscle and makes you more whole.

When I got home I made kale pot and chicken broth which is like a chemical thing, or something, deep in the substance of me: it's what Teena fed me the first two months I was here. When I would come home cold and find hot liquid full of nutrient simmering on the stove. It was late when I was done and climbed in to bed, and early, and dark, when I found myself awake and up and ready to fill the boxes. Ready to pack. Ready to move.

I have this creative warehouse of stuff that's gone largely untouched throughout the year I've been at Chop: boxes with papers and card stock and markers and pencils and pastels and paints and canvas and fabrics and ribbons and stickers, brushes, sponges cardboard and glue. I have a filing cabinet and three bags, two boxes, and one shelf on my bookcase full of journals and writings and datebooks and research and facts. Archives. And six boxes of books. And these are the essentials, what survived after the farm. This is something I have always seen as my great problem: my inability to properly categorize and organize my creative "stuff." Thus, my inability to get up and go.

But I get it now, or at least for today. That that's just me, the unorganized which translates as that which is not meant to be contained. Same as the girl jetting over the bridge to Baltimore out late then up at 10 to kick it in Annapolis all day with a friend. Somehow, right now, one thing totally has to do with the other. Right now, they are one and the same.

I am laughing, smiling, quiet. Dancing. My life is spinning stillness, filled with song.