On Arriving

I’d be lying if I said this was easy. And I’m not being ironic. Don’t let my calm expression above fool you. And, there is some kind of real shame in this whole thought process. How can one be aversive in paradise? Today is easier, but yesterday I felt hollowed out of everything I set out to find. An ice cream scoop to my insides, the sound of the world scared me. I wanted like a third grader at a sleepover to just go home. That is the truth. 

How is it that when we get the things we want we somehow fail to be there for them? I’m sure in a few days the need and the want of something familiar will fade away like the glass of wine I hardly remember having on the plane. I am sure I will not stay in this space, afraid of the world and counting how long I’ll be away from home. But this is just the sort of truth I like to talk about.

I was curious to know how good I might be at being alone. And the truth is not at all. I feel sometimes the way I did when I first got to Idaho, like the world has been fragmented and no one else jumped on my island. You can be in the busiest of places and still the most alone you’ve ever known. But if I listen to myself, I would say, curl up in that loneliness and learn the interior of it. Because soon you will be somewhere else and feeling something else and all of this, will just be something to write about.

There is something here though, whatever it is I was looking for, and undoubtably this space is a part of that. It’s green in a way that transcends color and swallows you whole, green hanging from every surface, leaves the size of my stomach. The entire world smells like incense, a high school boys bedroom. Sound layers itself melodically like it knows where it is going- the bird outside my window, the dog down the street, there are children laughing somewhere.

This morning I figured out how to order breakfast and I have coffee and there is a cat on the cushion next to me that is black and white spotted and a girl with blonde hair swimming in the pool. And it is very early because I wake before sunrise and have to count backwards but never fall asleep again. I though I was going somewhere today but I am going somewhere else. And that is alright. I’m interested in the ways I might unfold for myself in the next forty days. I went looking and here we are.