Back in the Land of the Cold

The title says it all. 

My nomadic year has finally closed, as yet to be written about, with me winding up in a place I least expected. In fact, it was only a couple of months ago that I responded to a friend's thought about coming here for my new tourist-in-residence: "No. I've done that. No need to do it again." 

And yet here I am. 

Erg. The winter, though.

 

November 15, 2014. Rayne Frog Festival, Louisiana.

No, not in Rayne. I still have that scarf, though.

10 Years Ago: The Rootless Relocation Interregnum Fog

 

Lake Fausse Point State Park, Louisiana. Morning mist. November 2013. Credit: Mzuriana.

Original post here. 

It is timely to revisit this ten-year old post. Things have been foggy to various degrees since the onset of our COVID times. Multiple reasons, I suspect:

• Isolation from typical social activities, whether they be at old, familiar places or new. 
• The inability to embed myself into a community as I used to do - my temporary residences in Birmingham and Mobile were largely, although not exclusively, solitary times. 
• Deaths - of my mother, three aunts, and three people who were in my Tucson and El Paso circles.
• A professional upheaval due to a cascade of events, including COVID (of course), war, economy changes, and an untenable universal policy change by my heretofore good-enough, online teaching platform "home."
• Unrelenting toxicity from Trumpian quarters, white supremacists, nationalists, and conspiracy theorists or burn-the-witch-superstitious anti-vaxxers, et al.
  

These are heart-heavy times.

As a counterweight, below is a magnificent smile by a joyous man in Gardabani, Caucasus Georgia. Still foggy, perhaps, but a happy little weather front, brought in by some wine, joyfully shared by the host of a spontaneous feast for strangers from another country. 

A magnificent smile in Gardabani, Caucasus Georgia. June 2012. Credit: Eva K

Saturday, November 2, 2013

The Rootless Relocation Interregnum Fog

Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, New Mexico. September 2012. Credit: Mzuriana.

I didn't know about this, but now having experienced it, I suspect it's a thing. The rootless relocation interregnum fog. Where there's only so much room in your front lobal and it's packed with too much social stimuli and routine things fall by the wayside. You don't even think about them. Like writing. Or communicating.

Lady of the Mist. Alamogordo, New Mexico. June 2013. Credit: Mzuriana.

I left New Mexico at the end of September and now here it's November and I'm soon to leave my transitory stop in Missouri for Louisiana, and I haven't written about some very cool things still in New Mexico. Or much about the road trip with Carol to North Carolina and Tennessee.

Kutaisi, Georgia. Snow in the morning. February 2012. Credit: Mzuriana.

Things are just kind of foggy.