I spent the better part of today helping a friend move into her boyfriend’s house. What was weird is that I actually enjoyed this.

Tucson is hot and dusty…the horses kick up clouds of reeking dust, the cat hair tumbleweeds blow across the streets, they cover all our pants, they cowboys leave their dung all stinking up the place…and I had a great time carrying tons of someone else’s stuff around.

This reminds me of the time my car died in Idaho and Willy saved me and had me stay at his house to make sure the fix he did would stick and the car would be fine 20 miles down the road.

To thank him I offered to help him out with something. I was being a cordial guest. He said he was moving “some stuff” that day and said I could help if I wanted to.

When we got to the warehouse “some stuff” turned out to be a few thousand pounds of “stuff” that we scattered all over the Sawtooth Valley. It was fun, we drank beer, we talked about life, I learned about living in Idaho, and today was kind of fun too. I got chai instead of beer and that was okay.

It silly but I think it’s just that it’s such a simple job and you know when you’ve finished. Not like writing or cooking which is iterative and too open to mood and other’s impression.

When you’re moving stuff you know you’re done. The boxes are in another place and it’s time to shower and scrape off all the dessicated cowboy dung that stuck to your sweaty body while walking through the streets of Tucson.

Moving other people’s stuff is fun in that you get so see this weird intimate part of another person’s life that in the real world you never much see. You get to wonder and create all sorts of fun and interesting stories about the psychedellic painted bull with a weird smallpox texture. Why would anyone have all those bags?! You get to wonder why they saved all that crap.

The fun is that all that crap is all of them and that is kind of cool. For me, it’s like watching nomads in Mongolia and wonder how they can live like that. Help other people move is a mini-anthropology case study.

Another thing I learned today is that I’m a dick. When I can’t quite grasp something, in this case, the rather natural human tendency to collect stuff about your life, I just keep harping and picking away until someone ponders smacking me.

And let me tell you, getting kicked in the balls by a girl who rock climbs is no fun at all. I didn’t know rock climbers learned how to hold onto, and twist objects, with their toes. That’s another thing I learned today.

When I can make it happen there will be a kind of interesting picture of a reflection of the sky in a pot that I indavertently broke as I was about to gather the four of us moving all the stuff in a circle to get a picture. Oh well, another opportunity lost in an limitless ocean of lost opportunities.

And I got bacon out of the deal. It’s a good day when you get some bacon.

So today was pretty good and in a little while I will get some beer when I go to a film festival. And I’ll watch stuff that was kind of interesting and sometimes brilliant. And the day, barring any unforseen circumstances like a facial burn or a guunshot wound, will be pretty good.