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Wednesday, January 8, 2014.  I suppose there was nothing like a major move that could have so blatantly reminded me of the importance of place.  Such a disordering, disorienting and disorganizing experience this move has been.  Partly I blame myself not so much for making this move in the first place but rather for having STOPPED MOVING for as long as I did on the other end.  The 6 years and 11 months I spent within the walls of my humble home on the Mexican border south of Bisbee, Arizona was the longest uninterrupted period of time I have spent in one place in the 62 years of my life.

There was a time for me to live in that place.  Now is the time for me to live in this place.  I am reminded of the comfort I have found all of my adult life from this passage from the Bible:

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Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

King James Version (KJV)

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Finding a way to cram my belongings into a space 1/3 the size of that house is another charming aspect of having made this move.  I am repeatedly finding things, placing them and then losing them as I try to organize myself here.  I have yet to re-find my wireless mouse!

I spend time every day trying to teach this baby to put things he plays with back again!  He wanted to play with the percussion toys this morning — half of them are missing.  In this tiny place where did he put them last time he played with them?  Who KNOWS?  He has perfect pitch and I don’t mean only with his voice!  I find his toys in the strangest places – mine, on the other hand….

I hate being lost, feeling lost and losing things.  Boundaries are involved for me in these concerns.  Not only is orientation of object central to orienting, organizing and ordering one’s life — so also do these patterns apply to our self.  Where does one self stop and another begin?  Certainly my psychotic BPD mother did not have the answer to this question!  (“No, Mother, I was not REALLY the all-evil child replacement for yourself to be confined in perpetual hell!”)

Yet I think blurring of boundaries – the inability to clearly know the place of ONE person and the place of another person – shows up all around us in lots of ways.  My opinion is mine – why on earth would someone else, say, become upset by MY opinion?  Everyone has their own!  Why would ONE person become upset by another person’s feelings?  A mystery to me.

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Which reminds me….  Monday night my daughter and I ran through Wal-Mart around 9 pm and the RUDEST man was berating, swearing at, belittling – oh AWFUL and TERRIBLE the way he was speaking to and about the young woman there with him who seemed to be his partner.  ABUSE!  Yet what could an outsider DO?  Yes, his feelings, actions taken in words DID upset both my daughter and me and made us think about similar kinds of situations in public when an adult might be treating a child that way.

There ARE times when we do need to be upset by others’ actions but here again, there is a time – and a place?  What could we have done that would not have made the situation worse for this young woman who left this man – at his command – standing in line at the cashier’s – to fetch a forgotten onion.  She “took too long” and came back with a tomato as well – and paid a terrible price for NOTHING!  But this is another topic – –

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And, although this is a doubtful time to mention it, we went to Wally World to replace the two 38 cent goldfish I had bought and accidentally killed last week.  I had been creative upon reading the advice printed on the plastic bag those fish had been transported to my home in that said they need plants to hide in.  I pulled some kind of houseplant of mine that I was rooting in a glass of water and dropped it into the gallon jar with the fish.  Evidently a bad idea that greatly shortened the time span of the life of THAT pair.

The second pair?  What was my tired mind thinking when I go them home?  I set the bag with the fish on the counter, snipped it open without otherwise supporting the bag and SPLASH the 1/2 gallon of water was instantly on the floor as I tried desperately to keep the fish in the bottom of the bag rather than allowing them to join their water elsewhere.

Then what?  Well if the goal was to get their water to room temperature I had to take a shortcut and produced exactly that in a bowl and quickly dropped the fish into it so I could take the time to figure out how to assemble the 3-gallon tank with air pumps and filters I had bought for them.  Those little guys, however, lived less than 2 hours due to the shock I put them through and now I have the prettiest tank on the counter by my fridge where my grandson can watch the LED changing bubble light display – but no fish.

Dare I buy more?

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