"The times, they are a changin.."

The ten foot moving truck is parked out front. The dog doesn't understand and keeps running to bark at the suspicious vehicle through the screen door, causing me to yell and my heart to punch at my chest cavity. For two weeks, we say goodbye to the familiar. Goodbye bathroom where our toothbrushes lean, bye Main Street where we ramble, bye bedroom with the orange curtains and streetlight beams, bye to the mountain trails we travel and to the kitchen sink where we stand to wash. This is the last time I'll see this, do this, drink this, I think, staring at bricks, porcelain, dirt, smudged car windows and a stemmed beer glass of stout. Amy and Mark are moving away too. When they leave for Canada, I cry a little, but it feels like tap water stuck in a damp clump of hair, rust, and toothpaste spit. My body must be rejecting this impending sorrow. Well this is happening, body. I say, playing sad music on the car stereo. Eventually, a breach busts through and two salty streams surge for my dear friends and for all the friendships, which will warp by the weight of distance. Goodbye old pals, I'm sorry if you fade into archived photographs, storied memories and precious artifacts of love. 

I watch Martin Scorsese's documentary about Bob Dylan called No Direction Home. Afterwards, I buy two of Dylan's old folk albums and sit at the computer listening to his rhythmic voice and guitar picking poetry. As a young man, he found himself in New York City's Greenwich Village where Allen Ginsberg was howling and small folk bands were collecting change in baskets and playing three song sets between poets. Alcohol, cigarette smoke and dancing coins passed through the candle lit darkness of crowded folk cafes in Greenwich during the 1960s. Strangers sat together while they witnessed art. There were rustic record players, but mostly entertainment was found when alive and in cafes, theatres, street parades and traveling circus tents. One big reason we're moving to Chicago is so that we can sit as strangers in theatres, old movie houses, comedy clubs and music venues, witnessing art. 

Once he got famous, Bob Dylan was asked a lot of stupid questions by the press, questions he'd question back or blow cigarette smoke at. When he started playing with a band and an electric guitar, he was booed and heckled, called fake, a sell out and even Judas. All for moving away from his acoustic folk sound. Imagine if every change we underwent faced a mob of angry audience members, of fans who are no longer. I don't have anything like that. But if I was faced with a similar sort of harassment, I hope I too would have the courage to play on. 

Tomorrow I drive my dog to Toledo, then on to Chicago.