Good-Bye, Hello

what I will be leaving

I have had the the itch to move away from Flip Flop for years. Most of the time I can ignore it, or I can remind myself about the lovable qualities of my present situation (they are legion-- ample parking, proximity to freeways and beaches, friendly, small-town people, great weather, big kitchen, rocking parties).

Yesterday these all seemed like good reasons for staying until I woke up and found myself on the H's couch, fighting consciousness and thinking that the positive things keeping me here are mostly ephemeral; people (who might move on) and the beautiful land (there are other beautiful places). Its not like I have a real job here, or kids in the school. My work always seems to be elsewhere. My lovely housing situation could could change at any moment (the landlords could evict us or a housemate could move away). I had plenty of perfectly suffocating things keeping me here-- inertia, the fear of changes, the fear of culling my collections and the fear of causing others inconvenience. I have been here in this house for nearly five years. That suddenly seems like long enough.

I don't know where I'll be in August. I'll keep you posted.

The Seduction of Place

Sometimes while reading John B , I remember the things that make me happy. That is what kindred spirits do. I was reading his post about his stretch of river and it made me think about the places that I love and why I love them. I also got a pang of guilt, thinking about how I have neglected the Gazetteer.

I fell in love with a boy once, when we were walking down his nondescript cul-de-sac, a block of suburbia that could have been anywhere in the developed world, and he wondered aloud how he had often tried to figure out the essential difference between Washburn (the street he spent his entire childhood on) and Button, a nearly identical street, one block over. What made Washburn so Washburnish? The way he said "Washburnish" made it seem epic, like it was an entire universe unto itself. As if one could spend a lifetime studying the habits, the literature, the history, the wildlife and people of Washburn. At that moment, I realized I was not alone in my private fascination with place.

And the boy? It didn't last, but I suppose he's all grown up, and finding reasons to love new places.