Movin' On

In a comment to my post Too Much Death, ex-Louisvillian turned Yankee Bucky Four-Eyes wrote: “Here's to a fresh, better new year for all!” Bucky’s toast to the coming year is one I can echo. There have been too many losses for too many folks in 2005, so I am looking toward 2006. It’s time for me to look to the future and start moving toward and into it.

Since the departure of my "guests", we (my new housekeeper, Tiffany and I) have put my spare bedroom back into some acceptable, if Spartan, order. My guests removed from it—and in the act cluttered my study—those items that, to me at least, made it cozy: lamps, books, figurines, etc. I still have to place those back into the room; however, at the moment it is clean and disinfected.

One aspect of the now-clean bedroom is that my housemate, Alex the cat to whom I am an indentured servant, has decided to move in. Alex no longer hops onto my bed as soon as I am contentedly covered by my eiderdown. He now sleeps contentedly on the comforter in the spare bedroom—or, should I begin calling it “Alex’s room?” The only problem that I can see with Alex having his own room is that I may not want to return the figurines to the lampstand and chest-of-drawers in there. Alex has a habit of walking across the surfaces of furniture and pushing whatever he can off and onto the floor.

Speaking of figurines, Bucky at times photographs and posts picture of her figurines—toys?—in weird and sometimes, uh, rather obscene poses. I have at times envied Bucky’s collection of toys. Then I realized that I have my own collection in shadow boxes on my living room wall. It appears that my guests only stole 3 of the figurines—a family of cats—from one of the shadow boxes. Thankfully, my #2 son gave me a Native American Eagle Dancer that fits nicely into that shadow box.


As I am moving on into 2006, I will be doing so with the company of some of my dearest friends—books. With Tiffany’s help, I have finally gotten all of the shelves and many of my books into the (almost) floor-to-ceiling book cases that line the walls of my study. (Can I now begin to call that room my “library”?) The books are not yet in the order in which I eventually want them; they are, however, out of the boxes that have contained them for so long and up where I can find them.

I also have my dragon kite back up on the wall in my entrance hall. I realize that I shall never fly that kite, for I, like Charlie Brown, would inevitably get it ensnared in the branches of a tree that would eat it.

Does anyone know anything about fengshui (Feng Shui)? I have read a book or two, but I still can’t seem to get the placement and arrangement right!

As I move on toward and into the coming year, having again remembered the dance of Christmas, I feel the need to do the dance of life and love. The losses I have suffered in the past few years have affected the dance’s movements, but I sense a new choreography coming in to my life that conveys a fresh freedom, love, hope, joy—and shalom.