Advice to the wise: do not attempt to move house, start a honeymoon, finish an article, do your taxes, organize a wedding in a different country and pack for moving to that country all during the same week while you’re pre-menstrual. If you insist on doing so, please make sure you have a Doug on hand for when the crying jag hits its second hour. Also be aware that your responses to things like your tenants telling you they are moving out a month earlier than hoped will be less rational than desired.
This is our last day at the lovely Boardwalk Apartments. I will not miss the “little boxes on the hillside” sameness of the apartment blocks here but I will miss the water and the agapanthus and the ducks out the window over breakfast, and dinner on the balcony in the fading sunlight watching the geese fly over, and watching swift brown squirrels race up trees. I’ll miss the chipmunks and other cute life when I leave America.
We leave for Peru tomorrow morning at 8am. Doug is taking the modem back to the cable store now and I will only have sporadic access for the next two weeks. After that, we’ll be at Doug’s sister’s for a little. Those of you with my US cell number, it will still work for the next two months but the home number is gone as of today.
I am still surrounded by boxes and debris. Many of you know how much I resist change and that my usual panic at disorganization would have been in overdrive. I’m doing a little better now but I must get back to it.
I doubt I’ll ever get to these, but have some notes towards future entries: one, in which your author discusses Jack Goldsmith’s testimony about secret memos and the Ashcroft debacle, rendition, torture and what it means to be an American today; two, the upcoming film Rendition and what it says about freedom of speech as a paper tiger but one we cannot live without; three, the ethics of Jewish responsibility and your author’s challenges as a secular political activist brought up Jewish while reading Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ To Heal a Fractured World.
I’m sure there will be updates from the road but in case there aren’t, have fun, y’all and catch you on the flipside!