So I'm here and Ugo's here and we're surrounded by boxes and - well - chaos. I am afraid my new duvet cover clashes with the sofa and then think: oh how silly to think you can have a separate office while combining and bedroom and living room and then think: you are not becoming Martha Stewart, you are Martha Stewart's idiot cousin.
This before I have unpacked mind you.
Meanwhile, Ikea seems willing to make good for some of their errant ways. We'll see. If they do, I will tell you, because it's only fair to tell the good stories as well as the bad. And the fact is the furniture, now that it is assembled, is working beautifully and I could not have afforded it otherwise. The bed seems comfy. Will know more after sleeping on it.
What I have done that makes me feel more at home is: put away some pots and pans, made tea in my new kettle (on the stove kind - Brits: it's hard to find the electric kettles you have when in NYC, alas) and am playing with my cat. At first he just hid behind the boxes, a sentiment to which I could relate. I just felt I was supposed to be more 'adult.' Now he's following me around. He's only lived in a studio so the amount of rooms confuses him.
My desk is covered in stuff so I'm typing on the dining room table. My study, the much vaunted study, is now a mound of boxes awaiting organization. As of now, the most organiz-y thing I've done is put my underwear in the dresser drawer and made my bed (with clashing duvet cover - horrors).
I also realize I don't have any music source. Not really sure what to do about that anymore because music seems to come from mysterious sources and I don't own an iPod. I do have my trusty transistor radio so can listen to WNYC, and my computer can play music but somehow the speakers I bought for it back in London got lost in the shuffle.
So much more stuff I need to find/acquire.
But now, really...to sleep. But first a shout out to my friend Nathan who hauled the last boxes of my stuff up the (4 flights of) stairs with me. Not bad for two people breathing down the gun of 50.
OK, but now, yes, to bed...where I will probably just cry. I did that earlier today when packing my old place. This feeling everything business is kind of crazy. I sometimes am nostalgic for the dissociating days when I could just go numb and then act like a lunatic weeks later to some innocent someone or find a way to implode. Ah the good old days....
Sleep....
Welcome to my blog..
"We struggle with dream figures and our blows fall on living faces." Maurice Merleau-Ponty
I am now transitioning into being married again with a new surname (Barclay-Morton). John is transitioning from Canada to NYC and as of June 2014 has a green card. So transition continues, but now from sad to happy, from loss to love...from a sense of alienation to a sense of being at home in the world.
As of September 2013 I started teaching writing as an adjunct professor at Fordham University, which I have discovered I love with an almost irrational passion. While was blessed for the opportunity, after four years of being an adjunct, the lack of pay combined with heavy work load stopped working, so have transferred this teaching passion to private workshops in NYC and working with writers one on one, which I adore. I will die a happy person if I never have to grade an assignment ever again. As of 2018, I also started leading writing retreats to my beloved Orkney Islands. If you ever want two weeks that will restore your soul and give you time and space to write, get in touch. I am leading two retreats this year in July and September.
I worked full time on the book thanks to a successful crowd-funding campaign in May 2014 and completed it at two residencies at Vermont Studio Center and Wisdom House in summer 2015. I have done some revisions and am shopping it around to agents and publishers now, along with a new book recently completed.
I now work full-time as a freelance writer, writing workshop leader, coach, editor and writing retreat leader. Contact me if you are interested in any of these services.
Not sure when transition ends, if it ever does. As the saying goes, the only difference between a sad ending and a happy ending is where you stop rolling the film.
For professional information, publications, etc., go to my linked in profile and website for Barclay Morton Editorial & Design. My Twitter account is @wilhelminapitfa. You can find me on Facebook under my full name Julia Lee Barclay-Morton. More about my grandmothers' book: The Amazing True Imaginary Autobiography of Dick & Jani
In 2017, I launched a website Our Grandmothers, Our Selves, which has stories about many people's grandmothers. Please check it out. You can also contact me through that site.
In May, I directed my newest play, On the edge of/a cure, and have finally updated my publications list, which now includes an award-winning chapbook of my short-story White shoe lady, which you can find on the sidebar. I also have become a certified yoga instructor in the Kripalu lineage. What a year!
And FINALLY, I have created a website, which I hope you will visit, The Unadapted Ones. I will keep this blog site up, since it is a record of over 8 years of my life, but will eventually be blogging more at the website, so if you want to know what I am up to with my writing, teaching, retreats and so on, the site is the place to check (and to subscribe for updates). After eight years I realized, no, I'm never turning into One Thing. So The Unadapted Ones embraces the multiplicity that comprises whomever I am, which seems to always be shifting. That may in fact be reality for everyone, but will speak for myself here. So, do visit there and thanks for coming here, too. Glad to meet you on the journey...
Enjoy! It sounds great, hope Ugo settles xx
ReplyDeleteThanks Lesley, it's getting there and so is Ugo. We're both kinda jumpy and the study is still a pile o boxes but have some lamps finally....so at least not like living in East Germany...when there was an East Germany that is...
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