Home/East

of all the things I am unclear of, unsure of in my life right now, here is one thing I know I'm doing right:
When I was 10, I wrote a letter for my 20 year old self. I had forgotten all about it until it arrived in the mail. It said "Are you still as lonely as I am now? Do you feel like no one understands you? If not, how did you get past this? What has changed?" By the time I turned 20 I felt supported, and it has only grown. On the other end of that ten year project, I doubt, for real, that I'll ever feel quite that ache again.

It has been a long time since I've seen you last. Weeks, months, years. You've had a hard time or you've been ecstatic. You've moved apartments or cities, graduated, worked hard. You have met or split with lovers who have moved you deeply. You have found or lost a job. You are filled with ideas and questions, shocking compliments on my writing, nostalgia for things we shared or I have never seen. You remember things that jog my memory, that make me cringe and laugh. We sit on a park bench, on a sofa, across a restaurant table, at a bar, on a subway, a museum, or we walk. We drink tea, touch feet or hands, embrace hello and goodbye, or exchange only e-mails. long ones. there is so much to say.

I am a junkie for this, lost in the articulation of what we know and are seeking. Each iteration of my language is more clear to me than for the last one. I find clarity through the variations in one-at-a-time encounters with this small army of good friends.

When love comes up, I say over and over:
you are in a relationship. plural.
we are, this is. I have said this for years to myself as much as others, and it is me at my wisest: we are caring for each other. tell yourself the story of you and I, then tell yourself all your stories, or try.

There are so many people in my life who aren't going anywhere, this is a privilege but not a guilt.

Some friends say, now "hey, you've been saying this for years, rachel, since we were kids, that every little love is as important as the big sexy ones, and you know, you're right. we are not really seeking any more than what we have."


(Every post from now through march is going to end the same way)
This love is centered in the north east, and that is very lucky.
Car rides, not airplanes. no counting time zones for calls.
of all the bad shit I still itch to flee from,
the stuff in the east to return to only to confront.
this is one thing for which I have absolutely no reason to run away.

Accepting Yearning

It is snowing in Portland.
Only a few inches, cold only dramatic to those not used to their winter coats.
Back home, the roads would be salted and we'd be on our way
But here, school is closed.

I can't help but thing they're doing it right here
Snow is a pause.
It is winter now.
My lettuce will have died.
I think of snow as quiet.
Not that there is less sound
but there is more motion and no more noise. more quiet.
But right now it is loud, I can hear the sideways wind
I stay at home, and try to be ecstatic at the lounging day in the place I am currently calling home

Today mom says something wise, when I ask if I can set up shop in her garage.
You are welcome to live as long as you like in my home, rachel, but if you want to set up things your way, you should find your own.
Where?

the things I like most in my life now:
riding to school,
bringing home cheap cabbage from the fruit market in my shoulder bag on the way home
Picking Parsley and Rosemary for pasta sauce from the front yard
Pouring boiled cornstarch (what they call gloo-glob) in to recycled tins, helping the young ones slather it on newspaper and paper bags.
Making spring rolls for potlucks
sitting on the shady grass of the park on a warm day
borrowing movies from the library and dropping them back off again.

There are markets and front yards children and recycling piles and lawns and potlucks many places.
There is no good reason I should settle here, and hardly an inch of desire.
So far from familiarity and so close in to a city.
Where should I go?

I have accepted the need for some wandering, but am skeptical of that seeking, the myth of a place that just-feels-right
craving opportunity that wants me, rather than me it
craving settling in. my place my mess. fantasies of canning and chickens alongside a studio I will not have to take down.
This week I am imagining a farmhouse, last month a little apartment,
Maybe I could see this uncertainty as exciting if I weren't trying quite so hard.

Now I am trying not second guessing.
just doing those things my gut says to do.
My gut says get out of here
all thoughts end in that
and, though petrified of not having a plan
soon enough I will