Tales of a 21st Century Gypsy

It’s such a long slow process, this leaving. I decided on this two months ago, more. It feels as if I put something in motion that is now simply proceeding, almost without my taking any initiative to make it happen. I’m just taking each step as it comes, and watching them move along. Saturday I drove to Virginia in the Prius, with both kayaks on the roof, and all the boxes I could fit inside. Everything was as planned – I fit a lot in the car, I left New Brunswick when I hoped to, two boats on the roof worked fine, I got to Arlington at 5:00, when I’d said I would. Beth’s husband Steve even came by and did a temporary fix of the garage door so we can open it to put the Prius inside. Susanna and Bonnie and I went out for Thai food Saturday night and talked about our commitments not to have jobs that trap us. On Sunday Susanna and I left when we planned to, stopped for Hungarian food at the New Brunswick supermarket as we had planned, and so it went. Nothing went wrong. Amazing.

It’s continued, even. Monday morning Attila, the grad student who's been working for me on energy issues, gave a presentation on the project we’ve been doing – or not doing – for the BPU. The people who wanted the presentation thought it was great and were simply delighted. I was delighted too, though mostly because I felt we put one over on them, pulling off that presentation in a few weeks when they have been paying us for months to do other work. (Uh-oh, I hope they are not reading this!) Monday afternoon I finally turned the indicators report over to the graphic designer at the print shop. One by one the hand-offs are happening. And today, Christmas eve, I’m sitting at Brewed Awakening in Metuchen looking at my van out in the pouring rain, watching it all go by.

The van – Matilda, she’s called - feels so right. She makes a wonderful cozy home, totally peaceful and private and uncomplicated. Sometimes I get nervous about this travel plan, that I’ll be lonely and feel I’ve made myself do it but that I don’t really want to. But when I stretch out in the back of the van it seems so right that I can’t imagine being lonely, just at peace. I hadn’t thought I was looking for that kind of peace, but it’s lovely. Kind of like lying on the floor in the dark and the quiet at the end of a yoga class, unwilling to break the calm by getting up and going home. I want Matilda to be my home, so I can enjoy that peace and not have to leave it.

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