"It swells"

Well, I made it. I'm in Burlington... currently sleeping on an air mattress on the floor of an apartment at 227 Elmwood Avenue (stop by and see me sometime, why don'tcha?), looking for work, writing...

It feels good to be here. Feels right. I feel like I belong here. All I need to do is walk down Pearl Street to Battery Park and stand above Lake Champlain, and see the Adirondacks in the distance, and I know I'm where I should be.

I don't want to say it was tough getting here, but...

First of all, there was just the rigor of packing up an apartment's worth of belongings: boxing everything up to go into storage and moving it out, then cleaning the old place. As my ex- put it, "It swells. The longer you go, it swells." She was right; it did. As I posted on a message board I frequent, it seemed like for every box I filled, there were TWO boxes worth of stuff I didn't know what to do with, or where it came from. And it all had to go.

Then, added into the mix was that I had a storage space worth of things (mainly books and records, but also about 10 boxes of unsorted junk from previous moves) that needed consolidated, organized, thrown out, etc etc. I'd gone through 15 years of panic moveouts, starting with my escape from DC with Stephanie... and during nearly every one of those moveouts, when "it swelled," I found myself just tossing everything into boxes and just shutting the lids. "I'll deal with this later," I told myself.

I decided that before I left Pennsylvania for Vermont, later would be now. No more boxes of Stuff To Go Through Later. I went through all those boxes in storage and filled 15 trash bags with junk that I didn't need anymore; weeded through books and other belongings and had a yard sale; with the help of my parents and brother, packed it all into a U-haul and moved it into a storage space in Carlisle, PA; then came back and cleaned, filled the car with everything that was left (WAY too much), and drove back to Carlisle to put THAT stuff into storage and figure out what I needed to take along north with me.

Here was where it got fun.

I knew when I packed the car for my escape run from Lansdale that I had WAY too much in the car. Every inch of space was packed. I felt like an astronaut, literally shoehorned into the cabin. Before I left for Burlington, I'd need to narrow down what I really needed.

I thought I did a pretty good job, but when I got ready to leave on Monday, September 10th (my brother's birthday), I was once again shoehorned into the car. But I couldn't think of what I needed to leave behind. The underside of the car scraped as I pulled out of my parents' driveway, but as I drove north on I81, I felt like I'd escaped and was on my way north. I stopped at a rest stop north of Harrisburg and had lunch (a chicken sandwich that my Mom made for me), and as I got back on the highway, all seemed well: I had George Harrison's All Things Must Pass playing on the CD player, the engine was purring (I'd added two quarts of oil the night before) and the sun was shining bright.

Now let's go to my journal...

Well, it's about 1:30 on Monday and I am sitting on the side of the road in my car on I-81 northbound. I seemed to be purring along all right and the engine started to sputter and the oil light came on, so I pulled over. Called AAA- not sure what to do except go back to Carlisle. The car is packed- I mean PACKED...

Then, at the top of the next page, are three phone numbers. I'm not sure what the first one is, but the second one is Carlisle Auto Salvage, and the third is the phone number for the loan shark company that holds a lien on my car.

Back to my journal:

So... I packed the car full of my stuff and hit the road for Burlington at about 11 am yesterday (Monday)... stopped at a rest stop and had yunch (a chicked sandwich Mom packed for me) and then got back on the road... drove about 30 more miles and as I was coming up over a rise near exit 104, the engine kind of sputtered and then the OIL light came on... I pulled over onto the side of the road (because one thing I remember the CAR TALK guys saying was "when you see the OIL light come on, it means PULL OVER AND STOP THE ENGINE IMMEDIATELY. Which I did. And it stopped... and it will not be starting again. I didn't want to have the car towed back to Carlisle, but it's a good thing I did. According to the mechanic at Rufe (the Chevy dealership where Dad bought the car) the labor-cost involved in repairing it would be too great... and if a mechanic is saying that, you know it's a big job. Basically, because of the transverse mounted engine, in order to check and see what it is, they'd have to remove the engine... "and we could try one thing and it could be something else." So they said "Sell it for salvage."
So my car is dead.

So I'm renting a car.

Later. No, I'm not, apparently. I'm taking Amtrak. I am taking only what I need immediately. Once I start working up there and move into a more permanent place,

I didn't finish that sentence.

I'm pretty sure that what happened with my car was that I overloaded it and gave it the automotive equivalent of a heart attack! And while it was no great joy to sit broken down on the side of the road on I-81 on a downhill curve while 18-wheelers sped by me, or to have the car towed back to Carlisle and have the mechanic tell me "He's dead, Jim," or realize that whatever I'd be doing up north, I wouldn't be DRIVING, it was probably better for it to have broken down within the 100-miles-one-way-to-Carlisle-for-free-AAA-towing radius than somewhere further north, or once I'd gotten up here.

Things were lousy, but they could have been much, much, much worse. I had my family; Dad offered to pay for a rental car (too expensive) and I thought "Why not Amtrak?" So... Amtrak. God bless him and Mom: they helped pay for my moving van, DROVE the moving van to Lansdale from Carlisle and then BACK... then paid for my Amtrak ticket.

I wouldn't be up here if it hadn't been for their help.

So... the next day (Tuesday, September 11, a rainy day), I consolidated my belongings again: I had to take everything that I'd packed into the car and squeeze it down into four bags. I could only take along what I could carry on the train. And the next morning, Mom and Dad drove me to Harrisburg and dropped me off at the Amtrak station, where I caught a 5 am train to Philly to make connections with a later train north from 30th Street Station to Burlington.

One reason I felt like I needed to make the move was that, living in close proximity to home, I felt like it was too easy to be dependent on my parents for "help." And unfortunately, the last few years, I've needed a lot of "help," more than I felt a 43-year-old man should need. I love my parents, and I want to be in a position to help them. But I knew that if I stayed in Pennsylvania, within shouting distance, and tried to switch careers, they, of course, would be more than willing to offer help, and I would be more than willing to accept it. Something had to change.

Really, I feel like I had to move north to grow the rest of the way up. Whether or not that's what happens is another question entirely. But I no longer wanted to NEED them or EXPECT them to take care of me. I know that they probably will always want to, and I know that when I get to the point where I can take care of them (they're in their 70s, so it's coming soon), they probably will not want to accept. But it feels like that is the way it needs to be.

As I got on the train, I felt like a strand in the web of dependence was being cut. I love my Mom and Dad, but I've never really "left home." A lot of what I did since I graduated from college in 1986 was "for them." Moving to Vermont is for me... and, in the end, for them.

Back to my journal: after a few pages of notes and lists and phone numbers, there's a boxed-in note at the top of a fresh page, scrawled after I turned out the light on Tuesday night, and remembered something I'd forgotten to pack and didn't want to be without up north... I remember turing the light on and leaning over to the nightstand, reaching for a pen, and opening my notebook to the first clean page. Get one cup coffeemaker from box in basement.

And then, right below, the narrative picks up again:

OK... well, I got the one cup coffeemaker from the basement... and I'm sitting on the train... Mom + Dad, God bless 'em, drove me to Harrisburg to catch the 5 am to Philly so I can comfortably make connections in Philly. It's 455... the train leaves at 5... they're sitting on the platform. They kept offering to do things, carry things... Mom is fretting about everything, which is, I suppose, the way she handles things. Worrying gives her a handle on things that feel out of control to her, and my move north, I think, definitely feels "out of control" to both of them.

I wonder why I didn't adopt that way of doing things. I've got my own way.

The train just started moving. I'm on my way north. This time it feels real. Somehow on Monday when I was driving, it felt tentative. This time, I know I'm going to get there.

Elizabethtown. Still dark out.

It's so funny. When I left on Monday, I found myself thinking "It seems strange to leave Carlisle and not be going back east to Philly." And now, on the train, I'm going north through Philly.

Really didn't expect to be heading north quite like this. But in a big way, it's good. I need to have a minimum of stuff with me up there when I start out. Mobility is key. The car was packed full-- as full, really, as it was on my escape run from Lansdale. Going north now, I have five bags: a duffel with most of my clothing, a suitcase with my bedding,my computer backpack (stuffed with other things) and my "briefcase." (The fifth bag is a lunch that Mom packed!)

Mount Joy. Still dark out, although with the interior lights on, it's hard to tell, really. It's 5:25.

Anyway, taking the train, knowing that I really could only take along what I could carry, really forced me to think about what I needed. I couldn't take much that wasn't essential. And I didn't.

Symbolism, as I ponder the train heading east in the pre-dawn dark: I am heading out of darkness, leaving that life behind me.

Lancaster. 5:35. Lots of people boarding here. I'd guess that this is sort of the far western frontier for people who take Amtrak into Philly for work.

I wonder if there is any job that I'd take that could ever be worth a 90 minute commute twice a day? Or if my sense of home would ever be so strong that I'd rather do that than move closer to where I worked? The conundrum to me has always been: a lot of people who do that say that they love the area they live in, but then they spend so much time commuting and at work... do they get to enjoy it? But what constitutes "enjoyment"? Sometimes it's just the best feeling, when you've got one of those jobs, to feel like you've ESCAPED it... living in a remote (relatively speaking) area must feel like an anchor, a lifeline.

OK. Enough deep insights. It is 5:45- Mom made me three ham + cheese sandwiches, and I am now eating sandwich number one. Good, like a Mom Sandwich always is, with mustard and yellow American and butter on a grainy whole wheat kaiser roll.

This train is COLD.

Parkesburg. Sky is getting light.

I just looked at my tickets. Train arrives in Philly at 6:45; train for Vermont is scheduled to leave at 9:58! I didn't read the schedule carefully enough, apparently.

No, I did. I took the earlier train because I knew if I took a later train, I'd have only a half hour to make connections (and who knows what could happen with Amtrak); I figured better to have extra time than maybe run late and miss my connection north. Also, I didn't want to wrestle with four heavy bags on a later (rush hour) train.

Back to my journal...

Exton. 6:10 AM. In the southeast sky, there's a bright morning star. Venus? Mars?

Before I got into the car in Carlisle, I stepped out front of the house and took a look up at the stars. I felt like I'd be back someday.

It's weird how I feel like I need to do this in order to do that (come back eventually).

Paoli. 6:20.

I will miss having a car. I wouldn't have made it the last five years without one. I'm grateful and glad that I had it. But I wonder how much longer it would have lasted if it'd made it up there. There were other problems with it- it needed new shocks; there was an inexplicable ringing rattle coming from the rear driver's side every time I hit a bump; Dave (my mechanic--m) told me there was some kind of joint in the front wheels that needed replaced; he also said that when I got it inspected, it'd need a new catalytic converter to pass the emissions test... Again, it forces me to move up there and be (relatively) mobile, starting out. If I'd taken everything I had in that car, I'd be saddled... and if the car broke down after I'd made it up there with all that stuff, what then?

What I have is heavy and it's a lot to carry, but I can carry it.

Passing, but not stopping at, Rosemont. The train just crossed over the Blue Route a few minutes ago. It's 6:35; the sky is almost all the way bright.

Ardmore. The temperature on a Citizen's Bank sign we just passed read 65 degrees.

Cutting through West Philly now. The sky in the east is bright orange. It's 6:40. Five minutes to 30th Street.

O.K... it's around 7:15. I got a cup of coffee at Dunkin Donuts and I'm sitting at one of the tables off the concourse in the station.

Now it's around 9:10: two cups of decaf, a corn muffin, two newspapers a walk to the bathroom and around the concourse, a stop at the post office, and a long letter to June later, it's just about time to go get my bags from the baggage storage counter.

And now I am officially leaving. I am on the train to Vermont, heading north... leaving Philadelphia on the same tracks that I would sometimes take out of the city (when I lived here)... Running parallel to I-95, and just crossed Rt. 73... Cottman Avenue down here, but Skippack Pike where I was.

It is a beautiful bright clear blue day. Sunlight is shimmering off the surface of the Delaware- gorgeous. We are approaching Trenton.

A perfect day for new beginnings... and yet as I sit here plotting what will happen next, I find my mind thinking "OK, well, if I don't have my security deposit in hand by the end of the month, I'll just ask Mom and Dad for an advance against it..." NO! That is exactly the thinking and pattern I am moving up here to break. That I must let go now. There will be no calling home for money. I need to start bringing in money to take care of myself right away, as in this weekend. That will make me feel better.

The universe wants me to succeed at this, I am convinced. But my part is to release and bless the past, and follow my faith in good, not my fear of lack.

11 am. Coming up on Newark. In the distance, I can see the Empire State Building and the NYC skyline. Pretty, in its way.

God bless Mom and the lunch she packed me. Those whole wheat rolls are awesome. It's 11:05 and I'm eating sammich #2 now.

11;12. Secaucus.

The Empire State Building being the tallest, most dominant bulding in the New York skyline... that is as it should be.

Now in a tunnel, probably pasing under the Hudson.

12:15. The sunlight on the NYC skyline was gorgeous as we left NYC. Now in Connecticut: Greenwich... Cos Cob... Stamford is next.

12:40. The train is parallelling US Rt. 1... where I started out, a few hundred miles south and a few hundred years ago, with Steph in Alexandria, VA.

Pulling into Bridgeport (CT) now. I wish I had a map to chart my progress north.

Stratford CT now. I wonder how far inland we are. There are a lot of rivers that look like tidal inlets.

When I step back for a moment and really look at what I'm doing, I kind of can't believe that I'm doing it.

1:05. New Haven, CT. A brief layover; I ran down into the station to get a Coke and get Joe a birthday card.

Wallingford - Chris' Bar next to the RR tracks... one of the four neons in the windows is a "Yankees Game Time" Budweiser sign, with a colorful neon Yankees logo, and the other three are a Coors light, Miller Lite, and another Budweiser neon with, of all things, a Steelers logo in neon. In Connecticut.

I'm reading Shawn's Name The Boy. Wow.

2:05; Berlin, CT. Lovely old restored red brick train station.

2:20. Hartford. Another lovely old train station, this one red cut stone.

I'm four stories into Name The Boy. I really liked "Foolish Fire"... and the voices in "Clam Alley." Love the way he pieces the narrative together from the different characters' perspectives; love his sense of humor and his use of humor to pull the reader into the story. Some passages made me laugh out loud, and then a couple pages later, I've been hooked into this deep, serious scene. He doesn't sustain humor throughout, but kind of uses it as a device to soften the reader up and make his characters worthy of sympathy and empathy.

Themes and devices: drinking, men as soldiers. Characters are gritty but not in a charming way. Flawed.

Springfield, MA. Just passed the basketball hall of fame. Why here?

The tracks are running between I-91 and some river.

3:55. Had to switch seats; the train switched tracks and reversed direction, so I was going backwards. Kind of disorienting, so I crossed the aisle.

5:00. Crossed the aisle again, so now I'm back on the side I started on, but facing the sun. On the sunset side. Wow.

The train is going to be delayed at least an hour.

7:50. Just pulled out of White River Junction.

Reading a collection of letters of Thoreau's entitled Letters To A Spiritual Seeker. Why I love Thoreau: he writes this long passage which begins "Be not anxious to avoid poverty. In this way the wealth of the universe may be securely obtained," after which is a paragraph-long discourse on the "laws of earth" vs. "the laws of heaven." "Happy the man," he wraps up the paragraph, "who observes the heavenly and the terrestrial law in just proportion; whose every faculty, from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head, obeys the law of its level; who neither stoops nor goes on tiptoe, but lives a balanced life, acceptable to nature and to God."

Right?

But then the next line in the letter is this:

"These things I say; other things I do."

HA! THAT is why I love Thoreau.

9:05. Approaching Montpelier.

You know what's funny? Right before the engine died on Monday, I was thinking about my phone call to (WRTI DJ) Harrison Ridley, Jr. last Sunday. Sunday, Sept 2, the last Sunday I was in Lansdale, I went out for a ride in the car and was listening to Harrison Ridley while I rode. He was featuring Max Roach- great be-bop stuff. Anyway, I thought "Man, this is the last night I'm gonna be local... I need to call him." So I did... he answered in that voice, and I said "Harrison Ridley, I've been listening to your show for years and I'm finally calling in. I'm moving to Vermont and I won't be able to listen anymore." And he said, "Well, we gon' have to stoip that movement!" And we bantered back and forth a little bit... he said "You'll have to write or call from up there and let us know how it goes," and how he hated to lose a loyal listener.

Anyway... like I said, right before the engine sputtered and the OIL light came on, just a minute or so before the car's engine went into the automotive equivalent of cardiac arrest, I swear I was thinking of him saying that, and may in fact have said it aloud: "Well, we gon' have to stop that movement."

Coincidence? Some would say.

Curse? Highly unlikely.

Synchronicity? Definitely.

An act of creative thought in action? Could be.

All I know is, I don't take shit like that lightly, and am considering it a cautionary episode.

Just have to add in here that, no, I don't believe for a second that Harrison Ridley put a hex on my move. What I'm saying is, I repeated it just before the car broke down. That's all. Nothing but a big Hmmmmmm.

Anyway...

9:27. Just pulled out of Waterbury. The conductor said 27 minutes to Essex Junction, which is... the end of the line for me. My new home. Wow.

Now I am really getting nervous. As in: I'm really doing it. "I am moving to Burlington" actually becomes "I am in Burlington" in less than a half an hour.

God bless my new life and my new way of doing things. I let go of my past failures and past successes, and I move forward with joy, love, faith and awareness.

Wow.

O.K. I'm here. The air mattress is inflated. Time to sleep. More tomorrow.

I have arrived.

And now, six days later, here I sit, at the Fletcher Library on College Street in Burlington, ready to resume my job hunt, ready to hunker down and write. I feel like I know what Henry Miller meant when he said "I have no money, no job, no prospects. I am the happiest man alive."

More later. I have to go get lunch and make some phone calls.