Rain, jet planes and good-byes.
Outside, the rain is coming down in sheets. It often seems to mirror my mood, anymore, and tonight -- for all that I'm going away -- it's appropriate. Travel is normally the one thing that can make me smile, no matter what the other circumstances, but today...
Well, today, I'm just a bit distracted.
My bags are packed and ready to go; a suitcase, a backpack, a Sailor Moon lunchpail battered by more similar journeys than I care to count. When it's time to leave, I'll shrug on my winter gear, stroke my cat one last time for luck and for love, and walk out the door. I'm never coming back again.
You never return to any place in the world, once you've left it behind. Oh, you can come back to a location, but the place...the place changes when you're not looking. It remakes itself, becoming something new and completely foreign. We can never go home again. Home isn't there to go to. When I walk out that door in a little over three hours, I'm leaving this place behind me forever. And this time, it's a little scary.
I'm not saying that I don't want to go; I learned the folly of that a few years back, when I realized that if I stop moving, I freeze. I'm saying that I'm looking at the life I've been building, and realizing that one way or another, everything I've been or done or learned or felt is getting ready to change.
It's time to move again. It's time to shift. And yes, I know that I can do this, and some of you are shaking your heads and going 'listen to her whine'; but I also know that I'm frightened, and no matter how much of a non-issue this may seem to be through other eyes, for me, it's the end and the beginning of the world, all at once. I have a right to be scared, and for the moment, I'm exercising it. I'm terrified.
In the back of the house, Chris is sleeping, waiting for the alarm to go and command him off to the wilds of the Oakland Airport. By my knee, Leela is curled, eyeing the suitcase unhappily and all too aware that I'm leaving her again.
And I'm waiting for the moment when the world as I know it ends.
So here's where I get off, in a sense -- here's where I pick up my stick (with the lovely polka-dot bundle tied to the end), and bow to the fourth wall, and walk off the edge of everything. It's been lovely. I'll miss you all...and I look forward to meeting you again when I come home, and everything is shiny and new.
Love you. Wait for me?
I'll be there as soon as I can.
Well, today, I'm just a bit distracted.
My bags are packed and ready to go; a suitcase, a backpack, a Sailor Moon lunchpail battered by more similar journeys than I care to count. When it's time to leave, I'll shrug on my winter gear, stroke my cat one last time for luck and for love, and walk out the door. I'm never coming back again.
You never return to any place in the world, once you've left it behind. Oh, you can come back to a location, but the place...the place changes when you're not looking. It remakes itself, becoming something new and completely foreign. We can never go home again. Home isn't there to go to. When I walk out that door in a little over three hours, I'm leaving this place behind me forever. And this time, it's a little scary.
I'm not saying that I don't want to go; I learned the folly of that a few years back, when I realized that if I stop moving, I freeze. I'm saying that I'm looking at the life I've been building, and realizing that one way or another, everything I've been or done or learned or felt is getting ready to change.
It's time to move again. It's time to shift. And yes, I know that I can do this, and some of you are shaking your heads and going 'listen to her whine'; but I also know that I'm frightened, and no matter how much of a non-issue this may seem to be through other eyes, for me, it's the end and the beginning of the world, all at once. I have a right to be scared, and for the moment, I'm exercising it. I'm terrified.
In the back of the house, Chris is sleeping, waiting for the alarm to go and command him off to the wilds of the Oakland Airport. By my knee, Leela is curled, eyeing the suitcase unhappily and all too aware that I'm leaving her again.
And I'm waiting for the moment when the world as I know it ends.
So here's where I get off, in a sense -- here's where I pick up my stick (with the lovely polka-dot bundle tied to the end), and bow to the fourth wall, and walk off the edge of everything. It's been lovely. I'll miss you all...and I look forward to meeting you again when I come home, and everything is shiny and new.
Love you. Wait for me?
I'll be there as soon as I can.