I hate unpacking. Of course, I hate packing too, and I think packing is worse. But unpacking is a pain, too. I'm finally settled in my new place, have all of the stuff out of the garage where it's been stored for a few weeks, and am now faced with a mound of boxes. It's at this stage that I want to become someone who has almost no stuff. I think fondly back in the days (college) when I could fit everything I owned into the trunk of my parent's car. What's funny is that I own a lot less stuff than I did in early 2005, before I ditched most of it, and went to seminary.

I've been in the Bay Area now for 2 weeks, exactly. It's been enlightening, broadening, frustrating, triggering, happy, sad, giddy, and scary experience. Finding a place to live has been one of the most difficult experiences I've been through lately. A lot of that is the varied parts of me that feel drawn to different things. I've been mostly looking at studios and one bedroom apartments in Oakland, Berkeley, and surroundings. I toyed with living in SF, although it feels much more costly.

There is a conference happening now (appropriate to the date, I guess) sponsored by Evangelicals for Human Rights: "A National Summit on Torture: religious faith, torture, and our national soul". Accompanying that conference was a poll (PDF) of southern evangelicals on torture. The findings are deeply disturbing.

I made it to Oakland last night, after a long, crazy day driving from Blackfoot Idaho, to Oakland. On Tuesday, I'd driven through Yellowstone, which was quite wonderful. But I was getting tired, and cranky, and realizing that I was ready to be done already with this road trip, so I got up early, and drove long. I gained an hour along the way, which helped me get here just in time for dinner. I'm a bit disoriented, and not quite sure which end us up.

I am now west of the Mississippi, in a small town called Windom, Minnesota. One of the things that happened between Indiana and Minnesota is that the landscape changed dramatically. The landscape in eastern Indiana is flatter, and with some fewer trees than the landscape of New York state and New England, but it doesn't really have the big sky.

I have lived most of my adult life in comfortable, progressive enclaves (Cleveland Heights, OH, Western MA, Bay Area, CA - the one exception was Fort Collins, CO,) I have gotten really used to having people around me who feel like, for want of a better phrase, part of my tribe. Of course, my tribe is really more than one tribe. There is the GLBT tribe. The progressive religious tribe. There is the geek tribe. The crunchy-granola tribe. The academic tribe.

I'm sitting in upstate NY - a town called Apalachin, in a part of NY I've never been. It's the southern part, just above the PA border. It's funny, I've driven across the state on RT 90, probably a dozen times or more, but this time, I decided to try something a little different. It's an interesting part of NY state - very wooded and rural, but not touristy/resort rural, more like industrial rural. Binghamton, which I thought of as a college town, looks more like a working town.

I'm taking a little break from filling boxes and taking down pictures and wrapping delicate things in newspaper to watch the DNC convention via streaming video (since I don't have a TV.) In three days, a truck is going to come, and take all of my stuff away, to go to California. The next day, I drop Ruth off at the airport, and embark on my solo journey across country. I'm really looking forward to the trip. I'm thinking of it as part retreat, part vision quest, part liminal experience. It's a good thing I love to drive (Ruth doesn't).

Real Live Preacher is a blog by a real Baptist minister. I've been reading it pretty consistently since I discovered it quite a number of years ago (pre-seminary).  He even used to have a chat room I would visit on occasion. That's where I met Rev. Sean, a UU Minister (and on the board of Starr King) whose blog, Ministrare, I also read pretty consistently. Anyway, so RLP (or Gordon Atkinson, his real name) is very brave, and quite interesting, too.

On August 28th, a truck will come and take all of my stuff away, to go to California. It seems unreal, somehow, that it will happen quite so soon. But the date is approaching at a rapid pace. I'm in my standard "moving is chaos" challenging place. I get restless, have insomnia, and indigestion, among other things. It's stressful to move, and it's hard for me to feel grounded and at peace with all of it going on, even though it's all really under control. For me, this emotional state is familiar, having moved so much in the last few years.