Word of the Year: Disciplines 8: Gone Dark

 

Going dark. Sunset. On I-70 between Bachelor and Caldwell, Missouri. December 2006. Credit: Mzuriana.

 

 

It was a healthy decision to create a work schedule that lifted my creative activities to the same level as my income-producing activities.

The next decision, which came upon me suddenly, was to amputate my connection to almost all news-and-entertainment platforms and feeds. 

I stripped away ....

From my laptop browsers:

• Google news feed
• Four streaming services

From my laptop's start toolbar:

• Microsoft news feed

From my phone:

I kept my Feedly news feed app, but I chopped all of the news media, leaving less than a handful of person-driven columns that I enjoy. 

I don't have a television, so that's not an issue while I'm still in Mobile. In Missouri, it will be a different story, so I'll see how that goes then. 

Replacements:

• Print books
• Print newspapers that I can enjoy in air-conditioned comfort at the library only four blocks away (for now). 

 

Library books al fresco. Portal, Arizona. March 2013. Credit: Mzuriana.

Mobile, Alabama: Salt-Clumping Season

 

 

COVID salt. Tucson, Arizona. March 2020. Credit: Mzuriana.

Yes, it arrived about three weeks ago, I reckon. Salt-clumping season. Which some might call the rainy season or the impending hurricane season.

When the salt crystals in my shaker decide to organize into a unified group against their customary freefall onto my waiting dish, upsetting the proper order of things.

When I must introduce a union buster to show 'em who's the boss. A cracker. Some rice grains.

Other seasons

2011: On Mangoes: The Mango Season is Here (original source in Cock and Bull Stories by Ngishili here from the Wayback Machine)

2012: Caucasus, Georgia: The Tutebi Are Here

2013: The Seven Seasons of New Mexico

2013: New Mexico: The Windy Season

2014: Lafayette, Louisiana: The Mardi Gras Season Begins

2016: Antigua, Guatemala: Ant Season is Coming

 

Mobile, Alabama: Living Rooms Present and Past

 

My living room, office, bedroom. Mobile, Alabama. Credit: Mzuriana.

My living room in Mobile is also my bedroom, office, and exercise space. What comes in through my living space windows is my art. Soothing light washes the walls and floor in the mornings and evenings.  When the afternoon sun gets belligerent, I taper the shades to gentle its attitude. I'm at eye level, so to speak, with the live oak; its arms almost touch my windows, and in histrionic storms, they tap on the glass. A mansion is my neighbor. Vivid sunsets. Theatrical clouds presage storms. Curtains of rain.

Over the 10 years of my rootlessness, the minimalism of my furnishings has maximalized. It used to be that when I landed in a new place, one of the first items on my to-do list was to visit the local thrift store. There, I'd pick out a comfy living room chair, an office chair, a floor lamp, a bedside table and a side table for the living room. Back at the very beginning, I bought a bed (even two!). 

At the end of my yearly tenure, I'd advertise the bulky items for resale or I'd donate them to Goodwill.

However, it occurred to me - in Tucson, I think - that I could get double duty from my camping gear, and that's what I did, beginning in Birmingham last year. 

• Living room chairs: Two* backpacking canvas sling chairs
• Side table: Compact, molded plastic folding table
• Bedside table: Stretched-fabric, collapsible camp table 
• Office chair: Molded plastic folding chair
• Ottoman: Camp kitchen storage bin
• Laundry basket: Repurposed styrofoam cooler
• Kitchen wastebasket with a lid that snaps firmly shut: My Luggable Loo

 

My living room, office, bedroom. Mobile, Alabama. Credit: Mzuriana.

Demanding dual duty from furniture saves me shopping time upon arrival, money, and off-loading time (selling or donating the furnishings) at departure. 

 Some past living spaces

In my rooted house circa 2005

My living room in my rooted house. Missouri, 2005. Credit: Mzuriana.

My living room in my rooted house. Missouri, 2005. Credit: Mzuriana.

In Opelousas, Louisiana in 2015

My living room in Opelousas, Louisiana. 2015. Credit: Mzuriana.

My very, very Spartan living room in Birmingham

My living room in Birmingham, Alabama. 2020. Credit: Mzuriana.

The above picture of my Birmingham living room made me laugh. That was utilitarian, indeed. But my ottoman-slash-camp kitchen bin did its job just fine! 

My office was behind me when I took the picture. Same set-up as always, from Alamogordo, New Mexico, in 2012, through today in Mobile, Alabama in 2022.

So, let's look at my El Paso living space as the final retrospective

My living space in El Paso, Texas. 2016. Credit: Mzuriana.

In revisiting the El Paso space, I see items I've released since then: 

• The good-looking hat that gave me headaches. Literally. Practicality finally overcame vanity and sentimentality. 
• The apple green bendy table lamp. 
• The tabletop radio and CD player

 

**I've had one of these chairs for quite some years. This year, one of the legs split, so for now, I just use it as an ottoman, as it can't bear the weight of an entire human. When I leave Mobile, I'll harvest the canvas sling and the velcro strap, and toss the frame.

Mobile, Alabama: Bathrooms Present and Past

 My bathroom in Mobile: 

Mobile bathroom. Alabama. July 2022. Credit: Mzuriana.

I remember how joyous I felt about the light and space of my bathroom in Ferguson after a year in El Paso's coffinesque shower and converted-hall bathroom. 

 

My shower in Ferguson, Missouri. November 2017. Credit: Mzuriana.

My bathroom in Birmingham had the charm of a 1980s small-town medical clinic. No toilet paper holder. It did offer the dubious benefit of a window, street level, smack at breast-level in the shower, with the view of the boarded-up building across the street (before it was demolished), then the plowed earth after the violence of demolition, and, in time, a rather pleasant rolling green.

My Birmingham bathroom. Alabama. July 2020. Credit: Mzuriana.

 

My Birmingham bathroom. Alabama. June 2021. Credit: Mzuriana.

As my bathrooms have gone over the years, my Mobile bathroom falls in the Land of Not. Meaning, it's:

1. Not unpleasant, with the light that comes in from the west-facing window, and with the old-school, recessed wooden medicine cabinet and shelf above the sink
   
2. Not too small
3. Not surprising to have a clunky hose-and-shower-wand retro-fit kind of set-up because the building is a centenarian and showers weren't a thing back then
4. Not surprising that the new shower wand holder, affixed to the wall at a height appropriate for most tenants, fell off in short order because Mobile is the rainiest city in the entire continental U.S., and the adhesive used for said affixation was not up to the job, which meant I slid the shower wand into the former shower wand holder, which had been thoughtfully kept installed (because it was screwed into the wall), which was lower on the wall, which was 90% not terrible, because I am rather short, although the loss of the new holder left a wound on the wall where the new holder had been, resulting in rather an esthetic insult. 
5. Also not surprising that when it rains or when the humidity is high, there are moist blotches on the bathroom walls
6. Not expected at all that I have not even once had to employ the toilet plunger I bought in Birmingham, to which I granted precious real estate in my Prius during relocation, and which is a testament either to the good design of the Mobile toilet or the pipes or to the mystical power of the mere presence of the plunger in the space
7. Not pleasing that I need to flush out the iron water for a few seconds from the tub spigot before taking a shower
   

Mobile bathroom. Alabama. July 2022. Credit: Mzuriana.

Related posts

2019: A wilderpee and a big bug: Tucson, Arizona: Humane Borders Water Run: July

2018: Mexico City: Toilets I Have Known, Including This One

2014: "The need to empty one's bladder can lead to unexpected encounters." In Louisiana: Broussard's Happenin' Goodwill

2012: Dubai: Eating a Camel and Sleeping on a Table

2012: An attempted wilderpee: Kazbegi, Caucasus Georgia

The Lost Summer of 2021, Part 1: An Introduction

 

Highway 1, somewhere between Galliano and Grand Isle, Louisiana. July 2021. Credit: Mzuriana.

The summer of 2021 is a blur to me. So much had happened earlier in the year, and during the summer, both to me and to people in my circles. Deaths. Disappointments. Uncertainties. Travel feats. Travel fails. So many places seen, so many places slept in. Relocation searches and decisions. Moving out of one temporary home. Moving into a new temporary home. 

COVID, of course. The bad roommate that won't pay their share of the rent, clean up their mess, and refuses to leave.

• June 30: Left Birmingham, Alabama
• July 1: Tennessee, Missouri
• July 11: Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi
• July 12-15: Mississippi, Alabama
• July 15-28: Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama again
• July 29-August 13: Mississippi, Missouri
• August 14-29: Missouri, Kansas, New Mexico, Texas
• August 30: Louisiana, Alabama

 Let's see if I can reclaim that summer via photos, scribbled notes, receipts, emails, and texts.

Mobile, Alabama: I Want to Eat Them

 

I look at them in the wild. I look at my pictures of them. 

I crave them. I want very, very much to bite into them. 

Seductive mushroom. Mobile, Alabama. July 2022. Credit: Mzuriana.

I fantasize about their texture, their flavor. Surely the taste would be a limb-melting union of a warmed English muffin, buttery. Soft like the fluffiest of pancakes and yet with a bit of resistance to my teeth. The lightest feathered dusting of cornflour up top, and porous pockets within.

Seductive mushroom. Mobile, Alabama. July 2022. Credit: Mzuriana.

Seductive mushroom. Mobile, Alabama. July 2022. Credit: Mzuriana.

Seductive mushroom. Mobile, Alabama. July 2022. Credit: Mzuriana.

Alas, I have yet to discover their name, and maybe they could kill me. 

 

My cumulative collection of mushrooms here: 

 

Mobile, Alabama: A Curiosity

 

 

A hanging fox tail. Mobile, Alabama. July 2022. Credit: Mzuriana.

It wasn't there the day before.

It was there the next day.

A fox tail, it seems.

Real? 

I didn't touch it. 

Why hanging? 

Why hanging there? 

Related fox posts

2016: On the Way to Colorado: Snapshots

2017: Big Bend National Park, Texas: Poop and Circumstance

2018: Backyard Fox

 

Mobile, Alabama: Solving for X: An Inelegant Elegant Solution

 

From Luggable Loo to kitchen trash bin

 

It was a mystery. 

Something weird was happening to the plastic grocery bags that I used for my kitchen trash. 

The contents were falling through the bottom of the bags onto the floor. 

At first, I thought it was because there was an unnoticed hole in the bags, because that happens, and I shrugged my shoulders and determined to look carefully at the bags before I hung them from their customary cabinet door knob. 

But then I noticed that it seemed there were actually rips in the bottom of the bag. 

How odd. 

I did wonder about a mouse, but I had neither seen nor heard any other evidence of such. Nevertheless, most nights, I took the bag o' the day out to the trash before I went to bed.

However, the other morning, when I'd failed to take out the trash the night before, there was no doubt. Definitely some critter had a serious envie for the almost-stripped-clean corn cobs from dinner that I'd tossed in the bag. The knife-like incisions that ran perpendicular to the bag bottom were the final circumstantial evidence that an intruder was afoot. Furthermore, the two corncob halves had been rolled across the kitchen floor far afield of the bag. 

I still saw no bio evidence of a rodent, and if I've got roaches large and voracious enough to cut through the plastic bag with such surgical precision, I don't want to know about it. 

So what was this rootless minimalist to do to foil the rodent(s)? 

Well, you've got the answer from the photo. 

My luggable loo! 

It's a PERFECT solution! A easy-lift lid that also snaps shut. 

I feel so pleased.

A mouse past

I can only recall one other apartment where I had a mouse. This was in El Paso. I was in the midst of an online lesson with an ESL student when suddenly I saw a mouse skitter across the floor in front of me. I jumped in surprise, emitting an involuntary squeal. When I told my landlady that I had a mouse, she immediately proclaimed, "We do not have mice!" 

Yeah, well, the mousetrap you brought up to my apartment the next day soon captured the nonexistent creature. 

10 Years Ago: Istanbul: The Monogamous Diner

Go here for the original post in July 2012.

 

Monday, July 9, 2012

Istanbul: The Monogamous Diner

Sure, I was a restaurant slut when I first landed in Istanbul.

Every meal out I tried a new place, looking for the ideal blend of good food at a budget price with no hassles. The Turkish waiters wooed me into their lounges, promising to be my friend, to give me the best Istanbul had to offer, to give me good service. All lies. And every time I succumbed, I was betrayed. As soon as I sat down, they abandoned me, looking for new conquests.

I tried the inexpensive and generally-good bufes and their doners, but sitting on a low stool next to parked cars just didn't do it for me.    

I had to stop this promiscuous behavior and settle down.

And I found just the place, and it's only 20 steps from my hotel. Not the disappointing bistro that's attached to my hotel. No, my new place is the Trabzon Restaurant - a lokanta - that's down the alley between my hotel and the Cotton Box store.

Trabzon Restaurant, Sirkeci, Istanbul. July 2012.

It's not the kind of place you'll rave about after you get home. But the food is very good, sometimes exceptional (eggplant). It's like what you'd get at home, if you had a Turkish home, and your mom was a good cook. And the price is very reasonable. The folks there don't hassle you at all. They're friendly in a genuine way. It's quiet, too.

It's where I go to eat now.


Postscript: Two days after I made my commitment to this place, the owner brought out an immense guestbook for me to look at. The entries went back more than 20 years. There were drawings. Foreign currencies attached. Locks of hair, for God's sake! Business cards. Coolest guestbook I've ever seen.

So it looks like this place is kinda famous. I'm glad I lucked into it and had the good taste to recognize quality.  

A slideshow of some highlights, taken with the restaurant owner's permission:

   

Word of the Year: Disciplines 7: A Work Schedule

 

My corner office. Opelousas, Louisiana. March 2015. Credit: Mzuriana.

 

I have created a work schedule for myself that is completely new to my experience. 

It is new in that I have redefined "work."

"Work" now includes, in addition to income-producing activities, the creative actions I want to complete, such as:

• Twice-weekly posts in my blogs
• A written and pictorial narrative for my descendants, to tie them to our preceding generations
• That bucket list item I wrote at age 27, during a major turning point in my life: Write a book and have it published
  

Until my illuminating flash about this some weeks ago, I had viewed gaps in my income-producing activities as random free time, which my brain interpreted as sort of vacation time. Undisciplined time. Which led, too often, to wasteful, non-directed screen time. 

My windowsill office. Old Rustavi, Caucasus Georgia. September 2011. Credit: Mzuriana.

 

But recently, as I have grown older, my thoughts have gone here, and I feel a sense of urgency that is new to me. 

The past 12 years, since going rootless, have zoomed by! The next 20 years are likely to do the same. 

I don't want to waste them. I don't have time to waste. 

 

My office in Las Cruces, New Mexico. February 2019. Credit: Mzuriana.

My new work schedule (with a noon-2pm break): 

• Monday through Friday: 8:30am - 5pm
• Flex time: "Work" on Mondays and Fridays includes tourist / travel adventures 
• Flex time: Some income-producing work falls before or after these work hours
  

My office on the far left. El Paso, Texas. September 2016. Credit: Mzuriana.

Structure. Structure is good. 

 

Related posts

Word of the Year 2022: Disciplines 1: Introduction

Word of the Year 2022: Disciplines 2: Showers

Word of the Year 2022: Disciplines 6: Daily Walks

Mobile, Alabama: Clothes in the Wild

 

 

Street clothes. Mobile, Alabama. June 2022. Credit: Mzuriana.

 

Regretfully, insecurely housed or homeless people in my temporary towns are not unusual.  

But it's in Mobile that I've noticed the assortment of clothing released to the wild by the daily wanderers. 

On one hand, the shedding of no-longer-wanted clothes is just litter, adding to the existing detritus of discarded water bottles, soda cups and straws, beer cans, liquor bottles, sandwich wrappers, cigarette boxes, and the beaded remains of Mardi Gras' past.  

On the other hand, the shedding of the clothes seems organic. A natural molting of a skin. An undershirt's penultimate life stage that began from a cotton seed in a field somewhere close or far, fashioned into an undershirt, bought new, then perhaps donated to a thrift store - once or twice or even three times - passing through a different person's arms and over the shoulders - until the last person, who wore it until it no longer served, thus returned the undershirt to the earth, laid to rest in a place close or far from whence its threads sprouted. 

The final disposition of the clothing? Perhaps eaten and then excreted, in part, by insects. Said excrement to be consumed by another category of insects.

Insects that eat clothing. Source: The Spruce

Here is the debut of a cumulative collection of clothing released to the wild: 

Related posts

2019: Tucson, Arizona: Casa Alitas: "My Name is Elenita"

2016: Toronto: Seeing the Homeless

2015: Opelousas, Louisiana: Stories in a Cemetery

2011: Silver City, New Mexico: Averting an Implosion

Mobile, Alabama: My Doors

 

Doors. Mobile, Alabama. June 2022. Credit: Mzuriana.

 

Normally, I wouldn't think about the quantity of doors in my living space, with the exception of security issues that I've got to be mindful of. You know: minding the perimeter. 

In my Mobile apartment, despite its petite size, I have seven doors!

 

Doors. Mobile, Alabama. June 2022. Credit: Mzuriana.

 

Golly, I remember the time in my Birmingham apartment when I suddenly saw the doorknob of my front door turning. I called out assertively, "Hey!!!" And the person on the other side mumble-said, "Oh, sorry, wrong door." 

No, I did not buy that. It wasn't a confident turn of the knob, the kind of turn where the person knew they had rights of entry. Nope, it was a slowish turn, a quiet-like turn. He did the same to my neighbors. 

But being in Mobile over this hot and humid summer, with only a window a/c unit, doors are my best friends. 

I can cool my small sleeping/living space efficiently by closing the doors to the kitchen and to the alcove and bathroom. 

Doors. Mobile, Alabama. June 2022. Credit: Mzuriana.

The "alcove" is what I call the squarish not-quite-a-room and not-quite-a-corridor piece of real estate between the foyer and the bathroom. It's the space I hunkered in over the winter when scary tornado-alert storms blew through, when I didn't bounce down the five floors to the building's street level to squat in a corner behind the staircase landing.

My kitchen temp will climb into the 90s, while my living space can get down to about 83 with the a/c on. When I have the a/c on, I close the louvre doors between the kitchen and living space so I can corral the coolness close to me.

Doors. Mobile, Alabama. June 2022. Credit: Mzuriana.

When I don't need the a/c on, I can open the solid front door to reveal a louvre door that faces the hallway outside my apartment. It may only be my imagination, but it seems that I can draw the hall's cooler air into my apartment, especially if I place my little desk fan just so, in order to invite the air in. 

The ol' open concept is over-rated, is my thought. I like my doors.

A couple of doors of my past

Lizard at the front door. Birmingham, Alabama. December 2020. Credit: Mzuriana.

Door to my flat in Dubai, UAE. January 2012. Credit: Mzuriana.

Mobile, Alabama: Cheeky Squirrels

Looky Lou squirrel at my window. Mobile, Alabama. December 2021. Credit: Mzuriana.

 

Mobile squirrels think they are something. 

Not only are Mobile squirrels plentiful, they are kinda cocky, practically dashing across the sidewalk right in front of you in a show of no-fucks-given for your hominid-archical bullshit. 

Researchers have classified four personality characteristics of squirrels that vary among individual squirrels: 

1. Boldness
2. Aggressiveness
3. Activity level
4. Sociability

The researchers devised various tests to quantify where individual squirrels fell on a continuum of the traits. Any of us can conduct one of the tests: 

In the third test, researchers quietly and slowly approached individuals in the wild to see how long it took for them to run away. This is a common way to determine an individual's shyness. [I will assume 'shyness' relates to the characteristic of 'boldness.']

As a group, I'd classify Mobilian squirrels to the far right end of the continuum of bold, along with a high activity level.

I lost a half hour of my life while researching for this post, which I shall never recoup, by watching the Backyard Squirrel Maze Ninja Course.  It gave me many utils of pleasure, so it was time well misspent:

PBS' Nature series broadcast a one-hour documentary on squirrels in 2018. You can watch it in its entirety if you've got a Passport account. If you don't have a Passport, you can view several engaging snippets here. 

In memorium

Recently, while on a neighborhood walk, I spied a dead squirrel. Laid out on a raised funereal dais created by a live oak's trunk arms that had surfaced from the loamy depths. Medium-size black ants, those avid morticians, bustled about the remains, performing their organic rituals. 

I admit to a fascination with the squirrel's tiny lower jaw and teeth, a wishbone of delicate architecture. It is maddening that I cannot capture a photo in which both rows of the teeth are equally defined, despite numerous attempts. 

Here's the best of a poor lot: 

Lower jaw of dead squirrel. Mobile, Alabama. June 2022. Credit: Mzuriana.

I have added the squirrel's jaw and its full corpus to my Carcass Collection here.

Related squirrel posts

2011: Louisiana Road Trip 2011, Part 1: Driving Day in Driving Rain (squirrels skittering)

2014: Lafayette, Louisiana: Sounds From My Place (squirrels barreling)

2015: Washington, Louisiana: Squirrel Cook-Off (Spoiler alert: It's not the squirrels doing the cooking)

2019: Tucson, Arizona: Temporary Home #2 (gregarious squirrels)

Oi. 

Another 20 minutes of the finite resource which is my life - gone. Here. I don't begrudge the expenditure, however.

 

Mobile, Alabama: USS Drum, the World War II Submarine

 

USS Drum submarine, USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park. Mobile, Alabama. June 2022. Credit: Mzuriana.

 

The name

 I didn't have any feelings about the name of this World War II submarine - Drum - until I consulted with my submarine-expert friend, Drake, while I was in the Drum's belly.

I wondered - why would a military force give a weapon of war such an ignominious name as Herring (which was etched on an outdoor stone tablet for another vessel)? I mean, herring? You eat herring. And that's when he told me that the Navy bestowed its submarines with names of non-sexy fish precisely because they can move under the radar, both figuratively and literally. 

When he said this, I thought, oh, that's clever. 

That's also when the name of the USS Drum struck me. Ohhhhh, drum, like that boring fish that is so opposite of sexy from trout or catfish or stingray or shark. 

Even so, Drake's explanation is likely apocryphal, as it's more likely that there were more Navy vessels than there are fish with common names, so you can see that once all of the sexy fish names were taken, the Navy was left with the more mundane. Like herring and drum. 

Another variable, as described by the guy whose job it was to propose vessel names, Captain William K. Calkins, USNR: 

"Captain Calkins described the many difficulties involved in choosing a name for any vessel. The names could not be similar to another ship's name currently in the fleet and it had to be appropriate, i.e. not something that would easily be made fun of. In addition: 'Spelling and pronunciation both had to be reasonably simple. The average enlisted man (and his girl friend) must be able to say the name comfortably. If his best girl couldn't spell it, he might not get her letters.'"

Source: A Fish Story, Smithsonian Institute Archives

Anyhoo.

Slide show here and below: 

 

Everything about a submarine fascinates. The requisite compactness of everything - even the officers' quarters - the intrinsic danger of living for long chunks of time underwater - not just under water, but under all of that pressure of water from above - the engineering required even to flush a toilet safely - living in small spaces for long periods with other humans.  

The smells of fellow humans, the sounds that human bodies make, the petty annoyances that can't help but accumulate and flood one's brains at times.

Some engrossing videos about the USS Drum:

• USS Drum oral history by veterans who served on the Drum

 

 Take the tour virtually here, courtesy of the History Traveler: USS Drum

 

 U-1206 Toilet Disaster

• A bit on the two people who oversaw USS Drum rehab - the man, Tom Bowser, served on a nuclear sub - he was also the guide in the History Traveler video. Here is his book on the rehab.
  

Stuff that stood out for me

72 men served on the Drum and only two toilets and two showers! 

Of course, I'm thinking each man had his favorite bottle with a screw-on lid on it for quick fixes, saving the toilets for the Big Jobs.

Mobile skyline from USS Drum submarine. USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park. Mobile, Alabama. June 2022. Credit: Mzuriana.

 

Rootless Relocation 2022: Where Next?

 

 

House move, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. December 2011. Credit: Mzuriana.

 Gosh, the year in Mobile, Alabama, is - as is usual in my temporary residences - flying by! 

Only three more months remain for my tenure in Mobile! 

And as is also usual, when I landed in Mobile, I wondered: Is this where I'll settle? It's so pretty! What a lovely location! No cold winters! Interesting people! A complicated place with so much history and inter-cultural textures.

And as is also usual, as time has passed by, I love the place, but I'm not ready to marry it and settle down here.

And as is typical about this time, future adventures begin to call my name.  

I do have a sure thing and a maybe thing for the six months following my Mobile exit: 

The sure thing:  To Chez Katherine in Missouri for three months, and hang with my descendants and friends there.

The maybe thing:  After Missouri, to New Mexico, to hang there with friends for three months, give or take. 

But after that ➡ these are speaking to me for 2023: 

1. Peace Corps (assuming I'd make the cut)
2. Long-term volunteer stint at a national park or national monument (at a gig that provides lodging)
3. Deep East Texas - for two good reasons: It's my legal home base and it's close to Houston, which still calls me for the zydeco community, so I can go there on weekends, and not be too close to Houston's trauma tax. 
4. In a fascinating turn of events, all of a sudden I got a "call" to Kitsap County, which lies between Seattle and Olympia National Park. Whoa, I did not see that coming. Purely by chance, I encountered a new acquaintance from Kitsap County, and I poked over there via Google Maps. It has all of the things that attract me: Not-cold winters, complex history and intercultural demographics, and geographic beauty. Plus it butts up against Canada! The Pacific Ocean. Reminds me of Northern Exposure! Washoe and Roger Fouts! Is it affordable? I don't know. I have zero interest in Seattle or Portland, which may be too close for affordability. 
   

I still long for a reprise road trip to Alaska, a 2020 plan quashed by COVID. ... I'm thinking to put that on the shelf until 2024, when my youngest descendant turns 16, which is the same birthday year that my daughter and I went on the first trip. 

As always, "In ignorance, I await my own surprise." 

Where Next? posts from the past:

March 2021: Where Next for 2021-2022

May 2020: Relocation: COVID-19 Unfolding, Part 20: Where Am I Going?  

COVID Interruptus: 2020: From Tucson: Plans --> Pouf!  "I don't have a fucking clue."

April 2019: Tucson: House Hunters, Part 1

September 2017:  My Next Home for a Year: Ferguson, Missouri

December 2016: Rootless Relocation: El Paso, Texas

February 2015: Relocation: Plan A, Plan B, and A Lie

February 2014: Relocation 2015: Plans A, B, and C

November 2013: Rootless Relocation 2015: Planning Ahead, Maybe Too Much, But It's Fun

September 2013: Rootless Relocation: Where I'm Going Next 

February 2013: Relocation 2013, Part 1: Mexico! [Spoiler alert: Future Fail!]

November 2012: Glimpse of the Next Place I Live? 

Where it began: 

On a marshrutka on a rainy, spring day in 2012, the thought came to me: 

If I want, I can spend one year in a different place in the world for the rest of my life.

Mobile, Alabama: Kitchens Present and Past

 

My kitchen. Mobile, Alabama. December 2021. Credit: Mzuriana.

My kitchen in Mobile is at the corner of sunrise and sunset.

It pleases me to push up my blinds each morning to beckon the sunlight through the south-facing window. 

When the wind blows strong, a live oak branch taps on my west-facing window. 

 

My kitchen. Mobile, Alabama. December 2021. Credit: Mzuriana.

My kitchen. Mobile, Alabama. December 2021. Credit: Mzuriana.

 

 

 

My kitchen. Mobile, Alabama. December 2021. Credit: Mzuriana.

Some kitchens past

Oddly, I can't seem to find photos of my kitchens in Lafayette or my pre-rootless house. Maybe I'll come across them later.  

 

My kitchen in Birmingham, Alabama. July 2020.

 

My kitchen in Tucson. May 2019.

 

Shared salt in communal kitchen, Mexico City, Mexico. November 2018. Credit: Mzuriana.

 

 

My kitchen. Ferguson, Missouri. April 2018. Credit: Mzuriana.

 

 

 

My El Paso kitchen. September 2016.

 

 

 

My kitchen in Alamogordo, New Mexico. October 2012.

 

Kitchen in Old Rustavi, Caucasus Georgia. September 2011.

 

 

Kitchen in New Rustavi, Caucasus Georgia. July 2011.

My kitchen in Playa del Carmen, Quintano Roo, Mexico. November 2010.