The person you'd like to be...

Whenever S. and I go to southern Utah, she tells me the red rock makes her feel like the person she would like to be.

I have the same reaction to the water of the Puget Sound.  I sit at a Market cafe (my favorite is the Sound View) and my eyes lift up and over the water.  I can hear the seagulls and I can smell the fish from the market.  I feel like someone who is reflective, someone who has the confidence to take a few moments to think about things and contemplate a new idea.  That ever-present push to be someplace else goes away.  I am someone who can take the time to pause for the view or look into store windows, to marvel at a small city park, or take the longer road up the side street just to see where it goes.  It no longer matters so much that everything is on the way to where I need to be, because where I need to be is...right here.

I am not sure if this is the type of person S. becomes when she hits the red rock, but I think it is, or someone very much like it.  I also think this person is not as dependent on place as I once thought.  I become this person when I am near the Puget Sound because it is here that I have always taken the time to be that person.  Since I was 13 and rode the Seattle ferry to Bainbridge in my first outings by myself, to the time I'd take as a grad student to sit in the Market and enjoy the view.  This is the place I have always come to remind myself what it is like to slow down and think, savor, recollect, and enjoy.

The funny thing is, this place could be anywhere, including my own home, if I work to endow it with that same sense of importance, the same reverence and gratitude that I reserve for this place.  Shouldn't our homes be the place we become the person we'd like to be?  Even in Utah...especially in Utah...being able to sit and gaze at Ben Lomond or Mt. Ogden, which can be done from nearly every block in the city.  Letting that vast mountain take your eyes up and over, giving you that sense of calm that you are the type of person who can take a moment to think, to contemplate, and to go out of your way to see something new in your home town.

Much of these thoughts, I think, come from reading Wallace Stegner and his appreciation for all things in the West.  An eloquent essay on Capitol Reef will be followed by an equally thoughtful and moving piece on Salt Lake City.  And you suddenly realize that the only difference between your house and a national park is that you live there.

Some people would love to have a houseboat in Seattle.  Some of those same people would probably love to have a house in the Utah mountains.

Aren't I the lucky one?

Sabbatical Officially Begins Today

I've arrived in Seattle, to start a year of re-awakening and re-envisioning my professional life. I'm here to start a new research project capitalizing on the wealth of data on extrasolar planets. I plan on writing about this to help me document my year-long sabbatical.

To help you and I remember them, here are my goals:

1. Complete new, original research.
2. Write a book proposal.
3. Renew my interest and excitement in teaching and learning.

But at the moment, there is a glassblowing studio down the street that offers CLASSES!  Must focus!  Wait, a class in glassblowing would help with #3.  Hmmmm.

Enough! To help direct my energies, I have set about to secure the necessary components of city life. In the last two hours, I have located:

1. A really good Thai restaurant.

2. A grocery store that sells "food". More on the quotes in a later post.

3. Very hoppy beer. It is the Northwest, after all.

4. Coffee.

Tomorrow morning, I plan on waking early (at 6:05, pony feeding time) to explore the neighborhood before making my way to UW for my first of many scientific meetings.  I plan to walk the 3.8 miles, weather permitting.  I need to do something to make up for the lack of stall mucking and other farm chores I usually do.

This is the strangest transition I've experienced.  This morning, Stacy and I were drinking tea while our four horses basked in the sun, our two dogs wrestled in the grass, our ten chickens rooted for insects, and our 12 baby chicks waited to go outside.  Now, a mere 12 hours later, I am listening a one poor, barking dog that has been left in the apartment all day, and I am completely alone.  No dogs to feed, no ponies to ride, no eggs to collect, no partner to share it with.

There was a time when I really thought city life was for me, but now I am not sure how people can stand it.  Seattle is a good place, far better than most, where people have gardens and go to great lengths to keep their dogs and cats in the city.  But what will I do in the morning?  Maybe I can get a part time job throwing fish in the market.  That is almost like having a farm, right?

This makes me think of S's peeps in Pasadena, who can raise enough food for 4+ people on a 10th of an acre.  Or the fact that the people of Taiwan grow a large fraction of their own produce, in the city.  Right now, there is an empty pot of the veranda of my apartment.  It begs to be filled with something living.  Maybe I'll buy some herbs to grow in it for the month I am here.