Packing Up

Maybe it's a sign of acquiescence. Maybe it's a sign of maturity. Maybe it's a sign of wisdom... But I love my bedroom and my home office. I really and truly do.

After years of moving out of my parents' house and moving back in, taking on the mortgage, wanting to sell the house, coming thisclose to selling the house, deciding to keep it, all the while grappling with my own issues of financial/emotional/intellectual insecurity, I've finally made my place my own. I've finally made my house my home.

But this morning, still sick and groggy (albeit a lot less sick and groggy than I was initially) I woke up to the sound of my cell phone. I talked for three minutes with Would-Be Romantic, who got sick by taking care of me. I surveyed my room, which is orderly and clean thanks to Would-Be Romantic. I felt a quiet pride in having a place for everything and everything in its place. And then I fantasized about packing it all up and moving on, to another room, another house, another place in my life to grow into and grow out of.

As Would-Be Romantic's cousin, Bootylicious, observed via text message last week, "It's courageous that you pick up and leave just as you find a place in life where you're comfortable."

Indeed.

As I replied to her text, and I said later to Puerto Rican Poet at a stinky booth in a Brooklyn McDonald's, the comfortable place where I'm at isn't a physical place. It's a mental/emotional/intellectual place, and as such, it goes wherever I go. True comfort and self-esteem don't easily fade away or deteriorate.

Yesterday evening, I received a text from Indiana Poetess that my favorite Boss Lady was freaking out because she'd misplaced my bio for the written program. I called my favorite Boss Lady, and I croaked through a ten-minute conversation in which she said she loved me, and that it's been such a pleasure to get to know me these past few months. I said that we should definitely get together outside of the classroom, and that she'd better come visit me in the Philippines. And then she offered to come by my house with whatever I needed since I'm so sick, and I thanked her profusely, and we hung up.

I want to write a piece about my favorite Boss Lady, and how thankful I am for the experience of the past few months: sharing my poetry with youthful minds, and having them do the same, soaking up knowledge and experience and friendship and love while earning a solid paycheck. The whole experience comes so close to perfection that it all feels like a dream.

But then, so much of what I've been going through lately feels sublime and ideal. Even the bad stuff, the hard stuff, the ugly stuff, seem like life lessons, from which to extract goodness and vitality. Even in this ill state of understimuation, I know that much.

Whatever the reason - my sickness or the homogenizing of goodness surrounding me - it's hard for me to be creative. I can't write with the poignancy of one who is actively rising out of the ashes, because I'm soaring above the clouds. So I'll write funny, happy little ditties that stretch my imagination and are suited for young adult readers. I'll finish light stories that I started ten or fifteen years ago, and be grateful when seeing the elevation of my style and vocabulary. And then, later, when there's a shift and I'm grounded again by school and work and the business of figuring out for myself another infinite truth, I'll be dark and a little cynical and brooding and romantic in the way that hobos end up being so unexpectedly handsome.

Right now, I'm preparing for that stage of the circle. I'm reading, reading, reading, and wondering if it's possible to simultaneously observe and live wholeheartedly and completely.