The Wandering Year

Soon, the Anniversary of Getting to Here

The woods on campus are convenient, if not rich. The autumn leaves on a windy day offer a subject for “light trails” rendering. A tripod would help to sharpen unmoving elements.

Soon I will end this elder-travelogue that began in November of 2023 and which I will conclude as a regular topic in November of 2024.

If you've been following here, thanks for hanging with me through this personal story as it has unfolded into an unpredictable once-future life in which we are now immersed, if not assimilated fully into.

The challenge has been every bit as difficult as expected, and more of a slog than I had hoped for. I admit to no small existential confusion and exhaustion building over the past weeks.

It is small wonder that I have not been able to settle down and see what story I want to tell AFTER the recent turbulence:

1) the move from Virginia on August 26;

2) the interim purgatory in a Columbia motel until the move into our tiny foot-in-the-door apartment on September 10;

3) the notice of availability of a larger space on September 16;

4) and the final (?) move into our possibly permanent apartment on 17 October barely a week ago.

So I will conclude regular updates on getting here, being here, and then belonging here some time in November, to wrap up the full year trajectory. This will be a chapter of personal history and challenge to look back on.

I already know that much of my hope of hitting the ground running were misplaced, at least with regard to timing. What I had hoped for after a month I now hope for after six. It is going to be a long winter.

We made it to the New Resident’s Wanted Poster

SOME EARLY ORDER

Several of the hoped-for changes are underway and most of the logistical obligations from starting life over again have been completed. After only three trips to DMV, we have Missouri plates and licenses. We have a bank, an attorney, a doctor and a dentist. Not yet: a baker and a candlestick maker.

A 55" flat screen is mounted on the wall and I finally have figured out how to use the TWO remotes to access thousands of insipid channels where we can watch two minutes of vacuous content after enduring only five minutes of obnoxious commercials. Pardon my snark.

The consistent unreliability of the Internet provider here sure does make me miss Citizen Coop's services back in Floyd.

We walk between 2.5 and 3 miles a day. We have realized, in comparison to our other lives lived in Birmingham, Morganton, Wytheville and Auburn, how close at hand and convenient the parks and trails are here. There is even a "back way" to a trail system we can reach by car in five minutes without busy roads. And I will have more to say about that here before long.

MAKING (Something Like) MUSIC 🎸

I spoke a few times over the past year with Columbia in our sights about my hope of finding others to enjoy music with, including playing keyboard and guitar. Son Nathan and I have met here three week different evenings for "Three songs" we pick ahead of time and may some day do justice to. This week, I invited a second floor-neighbor with his mandolin. It's a start.

THREE SONGS OCT 1

• It's Only Love in C

• Jesus was a Capricorn

• All of Me and Sunny Side of the Street

THREE SONGS OCT 6

• Witchy Woman in G

• Lay Lady lay in A

• Angel in Montgomery in E. Bonnie Raitt

THREE SONGS for OCT 23

• Beatles now and then - starts in a minor

• Clapton lay down Sally in A

• Moondance A min

LENOIR WORDS

I have placed a copy of Slow Road Home in the local library and have met once with the "Lenoir Words" writers' group here and once with the Columbia Chapter of the Missouri Writers Guild. There will be opportunities over the short cold days of winter to find my muse again, if she survived the transplant.

Only for a few days now, I have my writing flow back in place (having replaced the split keyboard and vertical mouse lost by United Van Lines). So it will be easier to say what I think, provided I can still do that. Complete thoughts have been scarce, completed ones even rarer. I still don’t know quite where or who I am. But I can find my way to meals now.

And in this 940 sq foot space I also have a 10' x 10' "office" for my desk--a place to itself, behind a door, that feels like an oasis of control; a place that is mine again. Finally.

So: just a few more Agile Aging installments to complete the story of the Wandering Year to get us here. Thanks for hanging around through it all, friends and neighbors.

With no mountains to block the sky, there are wrap-around cloudscapes here—just nothing of interest to include in the foreground. Not yet, at least. Pictured: an armada of cumulus sailing ships with some icy alto-cirrus virga.