| - Old Soul Song I leave July 10.
Actually, I move out of my house on Monday. And I'm getting really, really, really depressed about it. I sat on my (squeaky) bunkbed and took pictures of my room and cried a little until the batteries died and I had to slump, dejectedly, into a pile of pillows. Three years...is not a long time, to someone who has lived in one place forever. Three years is only a fragment of a bigger picture, for those of you who have been blessed with a lifetime in this beautiful place. A lifetime! I can't imagine it. I can't imagine ever living anywhere longer than I have lived here, in this house.
Could I ever really live in one place forever? Could I ever really give up the longing for empty stretches of highway, the coffee in paper cups from Shell/Circle K/Texaco/Exxon, the thrill of waking up in a new state every morning, the siren song of tires on asphalt, the mile markers and the trolley bells? Could I forget what Flagstaff is like on the onslaught of winter, the fact that every downtown skyline is different even when you would assume they'd all look the same, my father's battered road maps with routes highlighted since 1991? Could I turn away from Bethesda in March as the cherry blossoms are beginning to bloom? Could I deny the tangled ribbon of overpasses and on-ramps that is San Diego, the memory of Golden Gate Bridge lost in sunset fog? Do you know how easy it is to fall in love with Arizona? Have you ever opened your eyes to find yourself staring at a Louisiana gas station through sheets of pouring rain? How have I lived this long without seeing the inside of a Motel 6? How have I lived without the knowledge that only miles lie between me and the nearest border?
Once a gypsy, always a gypsy, I suppose.
But I must a reformed gypsy now. Because gypsies don't cry to see their walls stripped blank and bare, and they don't avoid packing their suitcase like a plague. They don't find themselves suddenly standing in the middle of their kitchen, staring at the countertops and the magnets on the fridge, forgetting why they had come there in the first place because they're so lost in wondering how they can ever leave.
I can't believe I almost forgot how much I hate moving. Even more than that, I can't believe I almost forgot that I've always been a traveler.
Things become compound & complex.
(Krystle Salazar, if I don't see you before I leave, I will die from being separated from the other half of my brain for too long. And you know it. So like, don't even.) |
