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Water Worm
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I've had about all I can take of packing. The old car, again, is filled to its gills, waiting for another three hour drive down I-40, 52, 74, 77, 81, and 460 until being docked and unloaded in Cranwell Circle. While I can honestly say I AM NOT STRESSED with the implications and consequences of the upcoming geographical shift, I am ready for it to be over and done with. There's just too much stuff, and I'm sick of all the "little things" that really don't fit well anywhere in particular. If most of this stuff were indestructible and I had a truck, I'd simply park the vehicle within free-throw range of the front porch and just launch everything into it from the doorway...
One thing I have appreciated is finding those things I either lost or forgot to have existed. Just the other day I came across a box of old folders and notebooks which I had used during my undergraduate years at UGA. Among those were notes taken for both a Folk Medicine and Aztec Civilization anthropology class. In one of the binders I even discovered a 12-page, 1.5-spaced paper on the Aztec "Flowery Wars" (a sort of ritualistic warfare directed at taking prisoners for later execution and consumption) for which I received a very laconic "A." Unless I lost a feedback sheet from the prof, the only marking on my work was a red-letter A on the cover page. I have to wonder whether the crossed-eye fool even read the thing...
Another item that turned up was a black-bound faux leather journal in which I'd penned a few poems, observations, and rants. In addition to the writings I'd pasted artwork, photographs, newspaper clippings, etc., onto its blank pages. All said, it's really kind of a nifty scrapbook of an earlier life.
On one page I've pasted a strip of typewritten sentences vertically down the right side and backing up to the book's gutter. The short paragraph, which I'm certain I printed out on one of the Office of Management and Budget's printers in the Pentagon (where I worked in 1991), is a simple "word painting" of a rainy drive to work:
It's raining and we drive. Cars sizzle past us on the soggy asphalt. I watch raindrops bead up, coalescing as if by magnetic attraction into one large globule. On the glass, in front of me, one transparent worm begins to slither and crawl, evading the wiper, moving to the right edge of the windshield. Flattening against aluminum molding, the jiggling worm breaks apart and disappears over the roof.
It's certainly not a great poem, but I've really enjoyed stumbling onto this little piece every 3 years or so and remembering that gray pre-7-am morning commute into DC.
One thing I have appreciated is finding those things I either lost or forgot to have existed. Just the other day I came across a box of old folders and notebooks which I had used during my undergraduate years at UGA. Among those were notes taken for both a Folk Medicine and Aztec Civilization anthropology class. In one of the binders I even discovered a 12-page, 1.5-spaced paper on the Aztec "Flowery Wars" (a sort of ritualistic warfare directed at taking prisoners for later execution and consumption) for which I received a very laconic "A." Unless I lost a feedback sheet from the prof, the only marking on my work was a red-letter A on the cover page. I have to wonder whether the crossed-eye fool even read the thing...
Another item that turned up was a black-bound faux leather journal in which I'd penned a few poems, observations, and rants. In addition to the writings I'd pasted artwork, photographs, newspaper clippings, etc., onto its blank pages. All said, it's really kind of a nifty scrapbook of an earlier life.
On one page I've pasted a strip of typewritten sentences vertically down the right side and backing up to the book's gutter. The short paragraph, which I'm certain I printed out on one of the Office of Management and Budget's printers in the Pentagon (where I worked in 1991), is a simple "word painting" of a rainy drive to work:
It's raining and we drive. Cars sizzle past us on the soggy asphalt. I watch raindrops bead up, coalescing as if by magnetic attraction into one large globule. On the glass, in front of me, one transparent worm begins to slither and crawl, evading the wiper, moving to the right edge of the windshield. Flattening against aluminum molding, the jiggling worm breaks apart and disappears over the roof.
It's certainly not a great poem, but I've really enjoyed stumbling onto this little piece every 3 years or so and remembering that gray pre-7-am morning commute into DC.
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