Sonia Connolly

Kitka sings this lovely Bulgarian song Son Mi Dojde (video link). The video notes state that they learned it from Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares in 1988.

I was asked if I had a Bulgarian source recording. I didn't have it in my large stash of folk recordings, and a general search online didn't turn up that version at all. Kvartet Bulgarka Junior did record a similar version (video link).

I got puzzled, and kept digging. Discogs.org, a comprehensive listing of old album contents, didn't list the song for Mystere des Voix Bulgares, but did list this likely looking album by Orchestra of the Bulgarian Television and Radio Folk Song Ensemble, which is their precursor. Balkanton published it as BHA 565.

I looked on archive.org to see if someone had uploaded this album. Sadly no, but while searching on the Balkanton number I did stumble across this treasure trove of rar archives of old Bulgarian recordings, and the odd Macedonian and Georgian songs too. It helps to read Cyrillic, and to have downloaded a rar decoding utility. The albums come from https://bulgarian-folk-treasure.blogspot.com .

I paused for thought, and then wrote to a folk dance teacher who helped me with another obscure album in the past. Yes, he had the album, and kindly sent me an mp3 of the source recording the next morning. Elapsed time from request to forwarding the recording, a little less than 24 hours.

I'm proud of knowing how and where to dig for information, and proud of continuing to think of new avenues when I get blocked. I use that a lot in my programming work, too. Back when I first got back into Balkan music after a long hiatus, I could tell it was important to me because I would keep digging for more information online, and get excited about what I found. Nowadays general search is getting less and less useful, but knowing specific places to search is still fruitful.

ETA: I uploaded the recording to dropbox: feel free to listen and download.

My word of the year this year was Trust. Overall I got what I hoped for.

It started with struggling to trust my big choices the year before around Home. Over time, I'm appreciating my condo and its location more and more. I'm still gradually shifting things around to work better in the limited space, and completing maintenance items left by the previous owner. This is where I wanted and needed to be.

I feel a clearer sense of what trust (and distrust) feel like in my body in relation to other people. When I distrust someone, it feels less tangled with safety. I can be over here, sturdy and safe, and distrust someone else's intentions and behavior. I can trust someone, and know that there might still be glitches and disappointments.

I trust my own signals and perceptions more. I've been in a decades-long struggle with self-trust, with betrayals that felt like they were my fault because I (thought I)(acted as if I) trusted the person. Now that I have people in my life that I trust, and I know what that feels like, it's less about predicting the future and more about sensing genuine care. Trustworthiness.

It feels like paying attention to Trust for a year ended up with being more rooted in myself in the present, less of trying to predict the future and other people's behavior. Also more trust in my connection to Spirit, although I don't have a lot of words around that.

My word for 2024 is Pride. I came to it because I was tripping over so much shame in relation to having trusted or wanted to trust people in the past. Pride feels like it's not allowed, like I should keep my head down and stay small around things I do well, to keep other people from feeling threatened. I'm wondering if I'll find more ease in my body if I allow myself to exist and move with pride.

It's also linked with LGBTQ Pride. Being bi already tends to be invisible, and being single makes it even more so. I put a pride flag heart decal in my window a while back, but the size I picked doesn't show up very well. Small steps, I guess! I have a tiny and conflicted hope for a focus on Pride to lead to a (peaceful! happy!) romantic relationship, since past relationships have been so painful.

A relevant quote from Nina Felwitch( proud to be queer )

I'm feeling some "oh no, not again" as I tackle another area that's been as sticky for me as trust. I'm adding the intention of being very gentle with myself and making room for things to be exactly the way they are.

( full word of the year list )

I've been patiently waiting for a contractor to first give me an estimate, and then to actually come out and do the work. Finally today he and his crew showed up, and now I have three doorways functioning the way they should.

The bike shed door wasn't made well, and it was misaligned to the point where the lock was very difficult to open and close. A problem when I need to get in there to get my bike and go somewhere! Now the door is properly constructed and balanced so that the lock works easily. Whew.

The back door frame swelled with all the rain at the beginning of this year to the point that I couldn't get it open or closed and just took my garbage for a little walk around the building from the front door. Now the door frame is partially replaced and waterproofed and the door opens and closes easily.

The attic trapdoor/ladder had bent supports so that I couldn't open and close it myself, so I just wasn't using the storage space up there. They replaced the whole contraption, and now that also opens and closes easily.

It seems deeply symbolic to get three doors repaired at once. Also that three doors needed repairing! It worked out to have trust and patience that he would eventually show up and do the job well. His crew were careful and thorough.

This is almost the last of the repair projects for my new place. The bathroom ceiling light still needs a new ballast, and I need to find an electrician or handy person to repair that. Although I just looked it up and it might be something I can do on my own. Also my bed frame center supports still need improvement. Maybe I can add angle brackets to them. Sometime when I have a spare weekend day and lots of energy to spend on figuring things out and taking things apart and making trips to the hardware store.

Today I went to the Berkeley Farmers Market, and then continued north to El Cerrito the long way - via climbing Spruce and heading out to Inspiration Point before descending on the El Cerrito side of the East Bay hills. Beautiful cool sunny day for a bike ride!

I wanted to go to El Cerrito partly as a reconnaissance ride for when my biking buddy visits next month, and partly because I know there's a large, well-stocked hardware store there. I needed skirt hangers, and hooks for the bathroom door. I'm sure there are closer places to get those, but this worked.

I chose a pair of hooks, biked home with them the flat way, and took 5 minutes to mark the bathroom door, drill holes, and screw them in. Tada! After three months of not enough places to hang things, the problem is entirely solved. Very satisfying!

Now that the bikes are out in the bike shed, the living room has become a more pleasant place to hang out, too. In some ways I feel like I just arrived, just finished moving in. It just took awhile for everything to find its place.

I'm looking up at my tile art now properly hanging over the fireplace. I'm still finding my sense of this as my home, the new place I chose, the right place for now and hopefully a while to come.

I went to the Berkeley Farmers Market today. It wasn't as terribly crowded as I feared, and it wasn't emotionally intense, although I did remember the people I used to go with as I biked over.

Then I continued north and biked up to the Berkeley Rose Garden. So lovely to be able to hang out there. Still having mild regrets about the expensive condo/house that was a few blocks from there, but I have made the best decisions I could along the way. I'll just have to make special field trips across town to visit.

I've been struggling with the lack of storage space at my new place, but I realized I was probably able to buy it rather than lose it in a bidding war because of that lack of storage. That puts it in a different light, an expected challenge to overcome rather than an error in judgment. Plans to build a bike shed are moving forward, although I am still awaiting a price estimate on tenterhooks.

I am loving having my bed in its little nook. The nook is well-lit, and it feels good to curl up there in the evening with a book. At this time of year, the evening sun pours in the nook window, and I can see the sunset when there are any clouds to be colored by it. In Portland, the sun moved dramatically from north to south during the year. I don't remember noticing the light direction change so much when I lived here before. It will be interesting to see how much it changes now that I'm aware of it.

My condo neighbors seem great, calm and friendly. Worth the lack of storage space to own property with people with good relationship skills.

I can feel my nervous system slowly slowly moving from "I have to figure out housing!" to "I live here now." Somehow it was easier to adjust to the temporary apartment, maybe because there was less to figure out with some of the boxes stashed in the garage. I was still in motion, house-hunting every weekend, deciding when and how much to offer, wrestling with tradeoffs. I guess it will take a while to bleed off all that velocity and come to rest.

I dreamed this morning that I had moved back to Portland. I was telling myself, well, at least I got out of that house there, and getting in touch with my bodyworker there and telling her I was back.

I've been carrying the dream around all day, wondering. I think what I'm craving is familiarity and ease. I've gotten starbursts of that here. Cindy and Andy are still making Thai curry at farmers markets 17 years later. I bought and ate some despite the ensuing headache. I used to buy from them every Tuesday and Saturday at the Berkeley market, a mainstay of nourishment on several levels.

The privately maintained public water fountain on the bike ride up Tunnel Rd is not only still there, it's been painted with a blue baby elephant and the words "Love, Chloe." Thank you so much, Chloe!

Tears of recognition and gratitude.

And at the same time. ( Hard )

In conclusion, maybe I'll take this computer upstairs and sit in bed to catch up on email, now that I have wifi again, and rest.

I biked half an hour, dropped Basil off at Berkeley Dog & Cat Emergency Vet, and biked half an hour home. He hadn't eaten in 24 hours and has been gimping around like either his hips or his innards hurt for a while now, so I thought something might be seriously wrong. After all, he's 14 years old.

They kept him all day, faffed around in the evening with bloodwork, and finally I biked down at 7pm while it was still daylight and waited there for results. The vet called and said he has the bloodwork of a 4 year old cat. Yay! Just being a drama cat because I'm packing to move again.

They gave him fluids, prescribed an appetite stimulant (that you put in the skin of the ear rather than it being a pill, smart!), and failed to note the gabapentin refill I requested even though the vet approved it. I'll have to go back at some point because the vet had gone off duty by the time I was checking out and asked where it was.

I mean, good outcome. But tiring, irritating, and expensive.

I'm signing for a mortgage on a condo tomorrow evening. It's 1 bedroom, 1 bath, 3 blocks from where I used to live in Oakland and seems delightful, except not much storage. I'll be adding a bike shed in my unit's parking spot.

Turns out packing is a lot easier when it's a question of packing everything and some of it is still in boxes, rather than sorting and cleaning and choosing what to keep. Kind of like it's easier to pack going home from a trip than leaving. Going home.

( Small quote about fascism, and a response )

Healing from trauma has been a long process of learning how to settle my system out of panic rather than being terrified in every moment. Even if panic and terror are appropriate responses to what's happening, I don't want to live like that. I want to find calm and peace and joy where I can, in seeing old friends and beloved neighborhoods and the spectacular San Francisco Bay.

Tomorrow I'm biking across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge because that's allowed now, to see a friend I've known for 30 years who lives over there. I already have more options for people to get together with on a holiday weekend here than I ever did in Portland.

(No local annoying small fireworks so far, but someone is setting off a bunch of professional-sounding big ones with deep booms somewhere in the vicinity, tonight on July 3. Still not nearly as loud as it was in Portland. I went out to look and don't see them, so they must be further away than they sound like.)

ETA: A hopeful comic about working toward change by potofsoup via minoanmiss.

Ogod the news out of Texas. Can we be a better version of humanity please. The amount of lifelong trauma in dozens of people one person can cause in a few minutes. In addition to the lives cut short. I want to believe we can do better, in the face of terrible evidence to the contrary.

Also, apparently monkeypox is a real thing, not an ironic joke. (As usual with siderea's posts, the comments are also worth reading.)

In my own life, all is well except that so far no one has made an offer on my house in Portland. I'm not sure if that's because I waited just a bit too long to sell and the interest rates went up, or no one wants a house in a wonderful neighborhood with an ordinary (not recently remodeled) kitchen and bathroom, or if there are other mysterious forces at work.

It's true that the house has inconveniences - steep stairs to the second floor, no bathroom up there, and slanted walls in parts of the two bedrooms since they're right under the roof. On the one hand I feel validated about being done with living there after 17 years, and on the other hand I'm surprised that of all the people going to look at it, no one wants it. I was under the impression that it's a seller's market, shortage of inventory, blah blah.

I feel extremely lucky that I like this apartment I'm renting, so it's not urgent to sell the house to get the money to buy something here. I'm starting to look into renting it out, since I don't want it to just sit there. This is not what I had in mind, and at the same time, the main part of the move is done. I live in California now. Perhaps this will still all work out for the best.

On Tuesday I successfully took two buses and walked a mile and a half to get to the PODS depot near the Oakland port. The scheduled movers with truck were there early. They loaded the truck and unloaded it here efficiently and carefully. Now I'm officially moved to the Bay Area, with a job working remotely, a rented place to live, and my stuff. (There was no place to put the PODS container at the apartment I signed a lease for first, and I decided to keep those plans in place with the new apartment.)

I'm amazed that a plan with so many moving parts went off as smoothly as it did. Everything had little glitches and annoyances, but I'm here! I get to stay! The sunshine is glorious!

I was wondering if my remaining furniture would fit in a one-bedroom apartment, and it does. I've unpacked about half the boxes, and so far everything has arrived intact. A lot of the rest is books. I'm unpacking all the boxes, and then leaving some of the ceramics in bubble wrap and stashing them back in boxes in the garage, since they're a pain to pack, and I might be moving again soon. Super-grateful for the garage to store bikes, empty boxes, and things I don't need right now.

I like this apartment quite a bit, and could see myself staying for a while, despite hassles with shared laundry facilities and fragrances. The realtor in Portland and I just reduced the price of the house there because apparently everyone wants a remodeled kitchen and bathroom, so my house isn't chic enough to bring top dollar. I'm still probably going to end up with about double what I paid for it, so I'm not complaining, just wondering if I'll be able to afford to buy a place I want here. I'm liking El Cerrito enough to consider buying here, which is a little less expensive. I'm guessing it will be like the apartment - eventually something great will show up, but it might take longer than I prefer.

In case anyone's curious, here's the $ cost breakdown on this move. (Of course there are other huge costs in terms of planning time, physical effort, lost sleep, etc. I did just start sleeping better this week after months of waking up at 4am.)
( expenses and a few credits )

And, I'm getting regular paychecks from my remote job that keep the costs from being a hardship. For years I've been telling myself it's expensive to move. And it is. I'm still so glad I did it.