Petrin Hill Blossoms on My Mind

What to say? I am sitting indoors, away from the thick clumps of air outside, and wondering about how time can go by so fast, and yet, sometimes lay out in front of you like the endless highway across the abandoned state of Nevada. Lately I have not felt as though life is moving quite as I want it to. This isn't to say it's moving slowly, because frankly, with the way work pummels me I can barely take a breath. No.....it is something more. I wonder how long I can stay in Austin and still love it the way I am certain it deserves. The weather, surely, is enough to break even the most cushioned of spirits right now, but it's more than that. There is no escape here, from the city that is. Everywhere I go there is concrete, or if I do escape it, I know that I am in a patch of trees that only tease me momentarily before yet another stretch of gray is revealed.

I feel as though all the people here are the same, and I grow antsy. I want something very very different. I want to get some epic tropical disease again and wonder, will I need a blood transfusion on a dirty Thai hospital bed? OK, maybe I don't want that exactly, but I do feel as though things are mundane. During the week, I work 12 hour days and come home and feel very similar to one of those large manatees who lives in one of the most beautiful oceans but can barely move fast enough to catch a floating piece of seaweed. Then, Wednesdays come and I am more exhausted than ever and I force myself to get into the car and make my way to kickball and GASP, socialize with people other than those in education! Finally, Friday sneaks up with a spurt of euphoric confetti and I am zonked by midnight from the joy of it all. It isn't really until Sunday that I have chiseled away the plaque from the rest of the week and start remembering that I even have a creative side that exists beyond lesson planning and putting up red and white polka dot border. I'm not even married and this is my life. I am single and still I find it hard to have time with myself. How is that even possible?

A year has gone by, and then some. This time last year, H and I were biking downtown to try and catch a few notes from the ACL music festival. I was still not hired and egregiously broke, and she was exhausted from life. Now, I have a great job that I love and we have 'game night' at our house and make chili and cookies. Naturally, if this weren't happening I would be complaining about that, too.....but I really do wonder how long will my life in Austin last? Will I meet someone who doesn't want to tie me down or 'figure me out' or think I'm interesting without really wanting to make me less interesting over time? Will someone every just rejoice in every bit of who I am the way I see it done in theaters? Will I ever stop loving Jane Austen and all the period pieces from a time where women were equally besotted and oppressed by gentlemen? And I digress yet again with Victorian sentiments.......

I just don't understand how to think about time. Am I meant to not think about next year? How can I not, when I may have to sign a legal document committing myself to set frame of days by April? Is Austin really somewhere I can be for much longer, or will I start to hate it, little by little, for not having seasons, not having an ocean, mountains, open space for me to run in? I just want to move to Italy, really, or return to my dear Praha, where the city is old and vibrant and the apartments are small only because dreams are bigger than property. But, you can escape to the hillside, the most wondrous hillside where pear trees explode in March, and you can weep at the lines of rock that have erected a magnificent place of worship. Why do I miss these things so much? Why does everyone else love Austin so ferociously when I feel mostly apathy? I wonder if I am deeply, deeply ungrateful, or if I am just being an insubordinate resident, a petulant child that doesn't want to like something that everyone else likes. How do you know when you are meant to be somewhere?

I often wonder if I have just been gone from home for too damned long. If I need to just get back there, get back home before I tear down every city in America with my longing for Chico. There is no beauty like that of my dearest orchards, my Bidwell Park, and the way the Pacific sighs int he evenings. How can I live anywhere that doesn't allow me to spend a Saturday gazing upon John Muir's most trusted friend, the giant Redwood?

But of course, so many questions, too many really, for a lazy, humid Sunday in a city that is jammed pack full of hipsters and celebs. So I will get back to my 'real' writing now, and stop telling you all the ways life astounds me, for I fear you would have to sit with me for some time before my mouth stopped moving.

Breeze for the Parched

I think this may be it; we have made it through the most painful summer in 50 years. It has felt like it, too, though I was lucky enough to escape the bulk of it. Just six weeks of relentless blaze has made me feel lethargic and irritated by the crippled landscape around me. There is a bleakness with drought that is hard to understand. It does not wipe out towns in a matter of minutes, nor does it break in half skyscrapers, instead it slowly extracts the life out of all the things around you. It reminds me of Scotland, in January, when the sun started setting at four and you pleaded with it to give you just a little more of its light.

But now, now I wake up and it is the second day of relief. There is a fall breeze that almost mimics a sacred howling and for a moment I can pretend that 90 degrees is as heavenly as 76 (the sick part being that I think it truly does feel like 76).

As humans, we love that things begin and end. Babies are born in unison with elders dying, flowers bloom then return to the earth, and we wait excitedly for them to resurrect again. We lament change, but really, it is what our life is driven by. How can we continually love the heat and childlike feel of summer when it has been that way for five months? We can not. We need change to start us up again, to regain our attention and our passion into something revitalizing. I need to let go of pools and BBQ and steaming cement in order to be part of something new. Never have I wanted pumpkin spice candles or hot soup and bread more. And when it ends, when my dear fall ends, I will miss it dearly, and when it returns it will be all the better because change makes me miss more ardently. Change makes me lament all the things I am scared I wouldn't love enough if they were mine always. Even my students show the benefit of change. In my classroom, students work harder and with more vigor when they know the activity will change in twenty minutes. They desire to be moved, to change their thinking, and I wonder if that way of thinking ever truly leaves us.

I suppose that is a normal thing to fear, not loving the steady things in your life (or perhaps I just like to pretend it is). What if I had everything I wanted, in my hands, every day, would I still love it so? Perhaps I would, or perhaps my affections would wander and get lost down the street, besotted with something just out of reach.

I already am remembering people and things fondly, as though when I had them they were utterly amazing. That guy, the one I know was not for me, is remembered now for the lovely words he rarely spoke, the way his arms wrapped around me when he chose to come to me at all. I am so good at these tailored lies it begins to store in my mind as truth. This, of course, is not how things were, and I must remind myself that change moves us forward because we need to move, and we must not turn our neck too far to what was. I believe something or someone is meant to stay with you, it would have.

The best part about change is that you never really know when it will sweep you away. One day you feel as though fall will never come, and then you are awoken by heavy, sultry winds and you step outside to the most delightful smell of crumbled leaves and cooler whisps of air. You are always given what you need, always provided with that vibrancy of change when you thought nothing could ever thrill again.

So I sit outside now, at my favorite coffee shop, letting myself get lost in the flashbacks of this new season, as I start to let go of everything summer placed upon me. I peel back the memories of summer until I am naked and new, awaiting all the sensational things that will find me this season.