how to leave a city.

the first step is to find the places you have loved, and say goodbye.

this may include canyons, and mountain streams....

or the Virgin Mary Tree downtown....

where you've continually gone through the years, to reach out and touch something larger than yourself, even if that something is just a tree...

or, perhaps, the best (burnyourfaceoff) thai food this side of thailand.

leaving a city can mean leaving people.

well: leaving a city means leaving people.

the best way to do this is to cushion the blow with food. hallie made her famous japanese meat balls, part pork part fake meat, lots of delicious.

i made a mediterranean pasta salad. lots of tomato, feta, and vinegar.

there is no deciphering the future. there is barely deciphering the present.

but we try, and here Corey reads my cards for the journey ahead, and tells me that the lovers must keep all channels of communication open at all times, and even when they think they're talking they might not be, and that this is going to be more work to keep the love alive than just loving.

but, of course. right?

still, though, it's something to remember. so i try. we try.

he also told me i will be balancing two kinds of work for the next few years, and that this will be my biggest task. he said this without knowing i will be balancing my work as a GTA with my work as a writer, and even adding in that i'm also supposed to be a student. this, so far, has been my biggest task.

There is a sense, somehow, of urgency in all of this. perhaps there is just a sense of urgency in "youth," but i'm getting the sense it never goes away. every morning i wake up with a new fork in the road: should i have cereal or fruit? should i submit to this journal or that journal, or no journal? should i call home, or write home, or neither? should i tell him, or her, this, or that? do this homework, or that? go running or no? and there is a feeling of finality in it all.

"Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out...." --Synecdoche, New York

Or.

Life is never destroyed. It is just altered, becomes something else, and from whatever point we land, from whatever decision we made, we just build, rebuild, move on or stay still to breathe. it may never be what we envisioned, it probably won't be. but it's what we have, and we made it.

there's no such thing as another day like today: the idea that there are 7 repeating days is much more manageable than that we get a set number of hundreds, and none will be the same.

Or.

it's reassuring. every day is new.

friends will gather wherever there is food, warm light, music, and even alcohol.

so many of our friends we have known for what seems like forever. they have known many selves of me. others i have known for what seems like days or weeks.

our love and laughter heats the room, and we move outside to the deck. we keep eating, smoking, and talking long into the morning. at 2am we sneak away to swim and kiss.

this is what we've been waiting for.

the car is packed, and it moves heavily out of the house.

i was up before the sun today. but we moved slowly, to the sounds of She's Leaving Home by the Beatles we drank our coffee and shifted our things around.

we moved into the light to say our goodbyes, and take our pictures.

my sister and i, on the morning i left:

the three women of the house, with our morning hair, tears in our eyes, and no turning back.

my mother and i, the morning i left home, for real, for the first time:

and then it happened. before i knew it we were on the open road. here we are, moving through prong-horned wyoming. there was a pull of turning back-- like i'd forgotten something back home, or perhaps, wishing i'd forgotten something. another chance to say goodbye. but we kept driving.

i still haven't shaken that feeling all the way.

strawbeary enjoyed the view of passing semis and hills flattening into prairie.

but safety first.

we watched our own shadow move away from us.

"jesus, i trust in you!" proclaimed an eastern colorado field.

the wind stood still.

"Jesus heals and restores; pornography destroys!" Kansas warned. these signs seemed to be sprinkled between the "adult" stores. there is a market to keep both sides happy.

and still, that string that lead back to home hadn't been severed.

months later i still feel it--somedays like an anchor, and somedays like a balloon.

i have had what feels like many homes, fleeting though they've been, and now endure missing many places at once: granada, spain; cadiz, kentucky; paris, france; carbondale, illinois; and now, salt lake city, utah.

i always return to the poem, One Art: I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

i may move far, and fast, and maybe from here on out, often.

but i'm getting a sense that there will always be these ties that bind.

everything changes, everything stays the same.

but I will always know where home is.

And it's never, really, that far away.

"You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place." -- Garden State