One down, one to go

"Brown Eyed Girl" is making me cry and there is no relief as "Listen to Her Heart" comes after on this Tom Petty Pandora station. In this moment I understand that there is no music safe from the emotional investment of packing.
When I close my eyes I realize that these songs are the songs of an open 321 highway, the windows finally rolled down to a sweet afternoon of sunshine and that earth mountain smell, flying around that last curve into Boone, feeling home in the August air. Yeah, these are those songs.

The good news is that I've filled one suitcase. It has been a tedious process of delicately holding each article of clothing and considering the memories, the people of my life that are woven carefully into the fabric. The nights that I don't quite clearly remember, but the shirts that still have Katie's arm around my shoulder as we stumble home. The baggy jeans I put on after finishing that half marathon, the most comfortable friends in the world, with the knowledge that I needed no one else to define me tucked in the pockets. The overalls of camp, tie-dye handprints and cut-off strings that still smell like pine and sound like laughter wherever they go.

(Oh boy,  Love You Till The End : The Pogues, there's a song.)

So many things.

The day after tomorrow.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Demasiado tiempo

The letters do not recognize me. They gather into words, whispering, wary of my approach. I am a stranger they struggle to recognize through eyes clouded with absence and neglect. They trace the lines of my fingertips, slowly settling into the lines of palms that promise to hold them more gently, more closely, to not let them slip like grains of sand through hands too young to appreciate them.  Time places heavy kisses on my knuckles, one by one by one and my elbows feel awkward against this new table. My knees should be crossed and propped perfectly into the familiar corners under my desk. A desk now covered by pictures of faces foreign to mine, mementos of memories I did not make, homework that is not mine to finish before the sun rises. But those used to be crooked smiles of my parents, bracelets that adorned my wrists through adventures, notes of Spanglish from dear friends, mugs of tea carefully steeped by a woman who made herself my mother. My forearms ache for the strength ...
Read more

Home?

I woke up earlier than I should have on a Saturday. It feels like my body is still on East Coast time - I wake up early here feeling late morning in my bones. Other than the timelessness of mornings, I am surprised at the peace and the contentedness I feel about this move. After these past few weeks, I look back over my time in Columbia and realize that so many things came to a head there when I had time to rest, reflect, and feel. I was completely mentally tormented and in emotional turmoil in the days leading up to my departure and even for the first full day of the trip. I can see clearly now how the comfortable and familiar has kept me safe in my life. But I can also see how it has almost kept me standing still when everything was calling me to keep moving forward.  I can't quite put my finger on why & it sounds so dang cliche, but after driving through Montana and being here in Missoula, it feels like I am supposed to be here. Wholeheartedly, c...
Read more

Una mañana lluviosa

It has been a long time.  A very long time.  Sitting here I wonder how many windows have been mine to look from in my quiet and favored hours of morning? The rain reminds me of Costa Rica, of places too far to touch, places that leave the hands of my heart reaching, yearning.  My writing is rusty and my fingers fumble through letters, strangers begging their pardon for the time that weighs them down.  I uprooted my life, and I find myself standing in a shower of its pieces, bits of earth shaken from the tendrils of roots once tangled so deeply in the past.  I live in Boone once again.  Beautiful, familiar, ever-teaching, fulfilling, renewing, hopeful, soul-sustaning Boone.  I gave up a job for an essentially unpaid internship.  I left a clear path toward home for my other home.  I interviewed, packed, and arrived in these mountains without a means of income, without a place to live.  With my life in my car, I drove strai...
Read more