Here I am.

Bonjour Détroit, bonjour you strange and complicated town, bonjour to the first ice cream truck i've seen in years tooting its little pied-piper horn, bonjour to the pink mosaic jaguar being lowered into place outside the high school, bonjour open windows and salvation army runs, bonjour bright red cardinal perched on the church roof,  on this, the first truly warm day of spring, 24th April, 2009.  

4/24/2009 - the digits add up to 10, which reduces to 1. A good numerology. In tarot, the major arcana, 1 is the magician. The creative one. The maker of things. A good reminder on this day.

It is three months to the day exactly, today, since I left NC to arrive in Detroit. I had been sure it was six till right now. Or at least four. So - three is good. Makes me feel less behind.

Time is on my mind these days.

Two days ago was my sixth-month birthday. I'll be 40 on October 22. I try not to ascribe much meaning to 40 - I hate the women's-magazine "Look great after 40" mentality, but: still: it's a landmark. Hard to ignore. Hard not to feel kicked in the pants, a bit, by the knowledge that I've been on the earth 40 years. And so. I do.

 And I'm also aware, more than ever, I think, of how deeply subjective time and space can be. Three months feels like six when you're adjusting and stretching muscles you'd almost forgotten you had: the ones used in the improvisation required to sustain a relationship that is more than friendship, more than work, but not just romance and not quite family. A thousand-square foot loft feels like a studio apartment when two people find keep getting stuck in half-hearted attempts to contain their physical Stuff till it acts out like a neglected child. ("But I'm right here, covering your every surface! Tripping you on your way to the bathroom! Depressing you with my very presence! Why won't you pay attention to ME?") 

An arrival in  a completely new city and radically different life feels like a suspension in time when one brings a workload from the job that defined and even sometimes consumed the life one came from. So I took on 3 grants and a report from my previous employer, contract work that allowed me to start the new life without the terror of No Work and No Income, but that kept me tied to the place I had come from, and made it harder, for better or for worse, to shake off my attachment to that place. 

I mailed in my last assignment this week along with an invoice for the contract fee. 

And so now, the new work, the real work, begins.

Bonjour Détroit, bonjour blog, bonjour transition into something - and somewhere - and someone new.