Emptiness

I have been distraught all day. Why did I not think to get a new passport in Canada? We were in Ottawa and Montreal, on weekdays when passport offices were open and I could have had a passport in 24 hours! Instead, I have run all over Baltimore simply to get a photograph that will fit the very stringent Canadian specifications ( or at least I hope so), and will fedex it back to Gatineau (right across the river from Ottawa) and will wait 'up to four weeks' for my passport. Eric will not be able to put me on his visa, I have to wait a little longer to buy a ticket for Quito, when I am in Ecuador I will have to try to get a visa by leaving the country and re-entering. Just makes our lives complicated. Not sure why I had not thought to take care of this when it would have been easy! I can see that Eric is frustrated with me, with himself...we did not need more stress!

Meanwhile we continue to pack up more and more boxes. I pack up everything I see and then ask for more boxes and pack up some more and then find another room full of more stuff. I am beginning to worry that we will not be able to fit everything in our storage unit. There is simply too much in this house of ours. All the big furniture is gone, but somehow there is an endless supply of stuff (junk?) to find a place for. I ordinarily have difficulty throwing anything away, but perhaps that will change in the next few weeks. I will try to pack an hour or so a day over the next few weeks, so that when Eric returns from his six week sojourn at the Marine Biological Laboratory, he will just have to move the boxes away. That is the plan.

The house is perfectly serviceable with a few chairs, a table and a bed. I wonder if we need anything else? I can sleep on the bed, read on the bed, eat on the bed, check out the internet on the bed. I wonder if we need any more furniture--we need just a bed! The house is more spacious, bigger, but not less inviting. I will have to consider a more minimalist home when we return.

We will rent a home in Eucador, and I would prefer a non furnished appartment, but I am not sure we can furnish a whole appartment. Perhaps we will jsut have a huge bed, and that will be in the center of the home, and Maya Eric and I will live all aspects of our life on the bed. No need for anything else. When we were in Montreal, Karen and I visited the Montreal Museum of Art, which presented an exhibit of John Lennon and Yoko Ono when they had their 'bed-in' for peace in Montreal in 1969. They had just got married and wanted to make a statement in New York but were denied entry because of Lennon's former drug charge, so they chose to go with their entourage to Montreal and stayed at the Fairmount Queen Elizabeth Hotel and brought in media and photographers to publicize their resistance to the war in Vietnam, and their wish for peace. They felt that because the papparazzi would be following them everywhere anyway, they may as well manipulate it for their own purposes. It was a fun exhibit, mostly for the nostalgia, the music, the memories of a more innocent time. Lennon's music in the background was essential to the expereience. That a museum could focus an entire exhibit on the time Ono and Lennon spent in Montreal on a bed is remarkable. The exhibition worked and was the only part of the museum that was entirely packed with people.

Part of this transition for me is to adjust to living with less; less furniture, less income, minimal clothing, few books. I wonder if for now I am just practicing. I am living in an empty house, working in an empty office, keeping a minimal amount of food in the refrigerator, wearing the same clothes every day, spending less, doing less. In my former life I would have been far more frustrated with so many limitations. Instead, I feel unburdened and freer without all the 'stuff'. The empty house feels so much more relaxing and spacious.