Look Homeward, Angel....

"If I had known. If I had known,” said Eliza. And then: “I’m sorry.” But he knew that her sorrow at that moment was not for him or for herself, or even for the boy whom idiot chance had thrust in the way of pestilence, but that, with a sudden inner flaming of her clairvoyant Scotch soul, she had looked cleanly, without pretense for the first time, upon the inexorable tides of Necessity, and that she was sorry for all who had lived, were living, or would live, fanning with their prayers the useless altar flames, suppliant with their hopes to an unwitting spirit, casting the tiny rockets of their belief against remote eternity, and hoping for grace, guidance, and delivery upon the spinning and forgotten cinder of this earth."

--Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

I've been inactive on the blogs, and on the forums, and for that I apologize. I've been trying to adjust to the Pacific Northwest and its constantly but beautifully inclement weather. My body has revolted against the entire move; after running myself into the ground getting here by committing a cross-country drive, I have been getting sick, then sort of well, then sick again. It finally all culminated in a case of pneumonia, and I've been home for three days trying to get back to the point where I am able to perform my job well.

As for where my head is, well...I'm homesick, I think. Not for family or friends, but for Virginia itself. My family has lived in Richmond for the last three hundred years, and I am the first to move away in all of that time; as a result, I think that part of my head and my heart is revolting at the change on some fundamental, elemental level. Or perhaps I'm being dramatic. I read an essay that Edna Lewis did on Southern cooking a little while ago, and it brought back so much that I'd forgotten--the smell of freshly turned soil in my Grandfather's garden, the season's first cresses, the morning glories at dawn strung across the fence posts of the soybean field--and it's this that I blame for my current malaise. What is more fundamental than the smells and sights of your childhood?

Not to say that Washington State is not wonderful. I am still fascinated by the hemlocks, dripping with rain and releasing the most fantastic woody scent...and the sight of Mount Rainier in the distance still awes me. The traffic awes me less, needless to say, but Washington's unrivalled in natural glory. I've always been more impressed with the ambiance of a place than its people or sights--being rather non-religious, I find a lot of meaning and purpose in the natural world as opposed to the spiritual realm. Washington's beauty lifts me, somehow.

I've been feeling kind of fatalistic here lately. We've put a bid in on a house in Orting, ignoring doom-and-gloom reports from my co-workers regarding Mount Rainier and lahars and lava. If it is going to happen, if it is my time, then it will happen regardless of where I am at or what I am doing. As Thomas Wolfe said, we're all simply "casting the tiny rockets of [our] belief against remote eternity, and hoping for grace, guidance, and delivery upon the spinning and forgotten cinder of this earth".

In the end, we make the best go of it we can, and hope to hell we're able to produce something more than a mediocre life from the whole thing.

Enough of that. This is more of a personal blog than I intended, since I usually keep this more as a professional site than anything else. However, at the moment, it seems appropriate to post my current thoughts here.

I love my job at Puget Custom Computers, like I knew I would--no complaints there at all. I'm not really ready for Christmas, but then...are you?

I did a personal blog on my trip over here...I'll post it up here at some point. It was quite an experience.