Springing Outward and Back
Although I love adventuring, exploring new places, and connecting with beloveds—especially when a road trip with R. is involved (and getting out of Texas along its northeast border from its center in Austin is itself about 375 miles, with even more miles in other directions)—it is almost physically painful for me to leave home. The more years we live in this current house of ours (which we are in the process of purchasing and not renting, the anchor deeper, the adhesion stickier), the more difficult it is for me to pull away, even temporarily, even with R., even with dependable others here in our absence, taking care of the domestic things, keeping it all secure and humming along.
Partly, my reluctance to leave is due to the weather, which is almost always warmer and sunnier here at home than anywhere else I’m traveling, and I have yet to tire of Austin’s warm/hot and sunny/sunnier/sunniest. I have the weather for a number of places of meaning lined up on my phone’s weather app, and as one example of the dramatic contrast between this adopted hometown of mine and where I grew up, as well as the extremes that each experiences: Tomorrow is forecast here in Central Texas for a high of 82 degrees Fahrenheit and a low of 50, with sun; there in Southeast Alaska, the high will be 13 and the low 8, with wind. Where we are driving is more temperate for early March and spring: between the 40s and the 50s, raining. I’m packing a raincoat, an umbrella, sensible shoes. If it weren’t for the person that I love that we’re eager to see, that we’ve promised to visit, I would. Not. Go.
I’m realizing just tonight, as I write this—after dealing with a swirl of emotions today prompted by a number of appointments and tasks and intersections—that the primary reason for my reluctance to leave is my current momentum with my artistic and academic endeavors: the excitement at what I’m exploring, creating, and discovering; the hours and space and equipment required to effect my vision with the pieces; the difficulty of taking with me anything much more than the writing. I have project pieces and piles of paper spread over multiple tables, and most of the time now I’m mid-thought and/or mid-act in the creative research processes. My people are still my priority, but my work has also become (again, after teaching, after raising my sons) something I love and to which I’m devoted; something I don’t want to separate from; something that thrusts me into the center of flow and produces joy.
