Wednesday, June 17, 2009

love letter to mammoth

we've left mammoth for good. well, not for good for good, but i will, i realize, never live there again. it feels great to realize this. i've drifted un-anchored for years. moorless, right? i have tried and failed to find my place, that sense of place where you realize with your stomach and limbs and brain that THIS IS WHERE YOU SHOULD BE. i've been looking, you know. so we left our mountain top, our beloved mountain top. we cast our eyes to the horizon and set our course back home. but what is back home anyway? back to where my parent's live? do parents make a home? does a couch make a home?no silly. home is just where you put your foot down and say fuck it this is home! and home is santa barbara. it was frightful, the anxiety making a decision like this caused me. when you have moved every year of your adult life, every 9-16 months putting everything you hold onto into a box and unpacking it again, deciding not to do it anymore is fucking scary.
do you regret things? decisions to move that happened years ago that derailed you? do you mourn the places you left or are leaving? do you feel jealousy toward those whose tap roots are deep, who are settled and content?
i won't regret uprooting myself. it is who i am. i am a human who needs to walk circles around my place before i nestle in. and now i know that i am where i should be. who knew?
but this is after all, a love letter to mammoth. our mountain. a pretend life that we stretched and tried and loved. breathed the air and let the cheeks get rosy again.

No comments: