No Place Like Nome: Five Weeks Finished

The note below was written by a fellow who no longer exists, a character who represented the building blocks for the present edition, but who has been pulled apart and rebuilt many times over the intervening five years. Back then, that bright-eyed bushy-tailed me was still fresh-faced upon this newly adopted landscape only five weeks after he had arrived in Nome, and he jotted down this depiction of the window through which he then viewed the world around him. 

What of those five years that have arisen and passed away in swift succession? Only some of the most challenging and rewarding work I've undertaken to date, in both the professional and the personal senses. There was the requisite toiling and learning, loving and laughing, losing and crying. The full complement of human emotion has been my gift, over and over and over, like the ebbing and flowing tide, washing over me in sync with the moon's seasons. I but a simple chiton (pronounced: kitten - meow!) glommed into this intertidal zone, learning to accept what comes and goes, again, ever again. Unlike that chiton, I soon take leave of this small space, I grow wings to land in some far off place, I grow wheels to roam, to race.

This will likely be the final post at this locale - both physically and digitally - as I am leaving Nome, this work, and this blog. Leaving all behind, treasuring each present, reaching furthur now. Thus, future blog posts may be found here: Further Now. In the meantime, while that space is completed and until a post appears within its glowing confines, please make do with the recountings left below, by that boy of five years past.

February 12, 2017

Another Sunday rolls up on the far horizon and shines into the window with a brightening sherbet light spilling across the land, a warm crimson wave splashing onto the snowy 'scapes, frozen as far as the eye can see.

I tidy my home, wash dishes neglected over the work week; cook vegetables that require some time for their preparing - steam kale with onions, boil beets with maple syrup and salt; cut my hair, sweep the floors, sort the flotsam of my life just now washed upon the shore of time from its shifting about in the ebb and flow of the daily hours.

My focus and the largest beneficiary of my time is this new occupation I have moved here to undertake. Having some autonomy and objectives largely driven and achieved by my own means has created a sense of ownership that leads me to stay at the desk into the evening hours, seeking to understand and inculcate all the vagaries of this position, seeking efficiencies in a process that always asks for more time and energy than is available. Colleagues in the small office I share are the brightness in the shadows, and commiseration and conversation with them serve as balance in the rocketing deadline-driven hour by hour of each day after day.

The other primary outlet for energy since moving to Nome is found outside, flying across the whited spaces on two man-motored wheels, punishing the body into fitness. Cycling has long been a component of living for me, but only in this past year has it become such an integral part. Not only is it my only means of transportation during the week, it also serves as entertainment on the weekends.

As has so often been true in the past, change and newness are the elixirs of this living. Reveling in all that is unfamiliar holds a mind that often wanders - here, productive in the present, keeping time in the now. Yet, that underlying restlessness remains, dormant for now, but will awake sometime in the distance to cry out for disruption and movement.

There are many possible explanations for restlessness, but none so compelling as the brevity of breaths with which one may have to inhale the many strange and varied places humanity is given to be within. But this explanation is just as handy in giving reason for an anchored existence - that one is all the better for knowing one land and few people in an abiding manner that deepens with each rotation of the earth around your one sanctuary.

The question comes - how many times may a form be shaped upon the anvil of the unknown? The answer seems to be - as many times as a form would wish for reshaping. We each dance across a number of alternate stages while the curtain hovers on the periphery. Some find that stage flits about, while others find their's more stationary. All are engaged in knowing what it is to be an element within the grand chemistry of existence.

It is easy to take life for granted, to take opportunities and experiences as commonplace, to accept without question the good and the bad. I know this is true in my own life. Thankfulness is the antidote I take to this drowsy intake of the world around me. So, I give thanks for occupation that stirs my intellect and challenges my intuition. I give thanks for family and friends who inspire with their unique pursuits and the curious avenues they take in fulfilling their dreams. I give thanks for the tender hearts and accepting souls of colleagues who I spend most my waking hours with. I give thanks for a healthy body and the time to flail it in chasing the sun's expiry through each rotation. I give thanks for the ability to have possibility, and the freedom to live life as a grand experiment.

Furthur Now