aroraborealis

Yesterday marked a year since amber_phoenix, longueur, and I bought our house! They moved in a year ago today, and I moved in a year ago Sunday. I can't believe it's been a whole year. So far, so awesome.

My therapist gifted me a sweet small mezuzah for Conspiracy of Delight. I plan to replace the scroll with a poem or two. I have a couple in mind, but this strikes me as a wonderful moment to solicit new poetry into my life. Do you have favorite poems of home, abundance, blessing, or other ideas that you think would be well-suited for a threshold and homecoming?

Here's one from my potentials:

What We Need Is Here

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

(Wendell Berry)

Last night, my four (4) three-liter (3L) cocktail aging barrels arrived. Hooray!

Except, uhm, this means that I need 12L of spirits to start using them. If your typical bottle holds 750mL, this means I need 16 bottles, assuming I use the full contents of each. So, uh, I guess I'm investing in booze this weekend.

Today, I give thanks for my new house and home!

After many months of searching -- some of them demoralizing -- the house-buying process turned from a slow slog to a whiplash fast conclusion. It's totally different from what we had envisioned when we first started looking, and it's really wonderful. I'm still moving in and settling in, and it's going to be such a pleasure once we finally have all the boxes cleared out, but even so, it's a really friggin' exciting and wonderful place to be.

I feel lucky to have moved from one great house and neighborhood to another great house and neighborhood nearby. I'm enjoying getting to know my new neighborhood as the place I live, rather than a place I travel through, and am slowly learning the rhythms of my new home and my roommates and myself in it.

A new home is, in many ways, a new life! It changes everything. I can hardly wait to look back a year from now and see what it looks like then.