What the UP does to a girl

I left my Capitol Hill cave for a long weekend with Christensens, Facchinellos, and friends in the UP. How long it has been since I have been there! A place that, even though I have never lived there, and have always been a visitor, is still a place I know well. I would label myself transient, with no unshakable attachment to any one place, still searching for where I will eventually settle, but perhaps its my mother's love for the UP that makes me hold that land on a higher level.

I spent a great amount of time with a friend from my AHWH days, Christa. I was so happy to hike with her and sleep outdoors, that I reminded her how lovely of a place she lives, up in Marquette. She, like most of us, is prone to forgetting in the drone of day-in-day-out the beauty of her surroundings.

Now I am back in DC, with two more rejection letters to add to the pile, and an invitation to a second interview in NYC, and a revelation that my screening to be an organizer-in-training is in NYC. In light of the impossibility that seems to be finding a job in DC, it makes these opportunities in NYC, the city with the classic ideal of American opportunity, more appealing. And in the midst of hot DC summer days ("its been pretty mild this summer, Dana"), balancing solitude with loneliness, uncertainty with expectation, I have looked forward to the chance for change, to start somewhere new.

But neither DC or NYC are like what I felt this weekend. In neither city would I be able to walk into a forest when I wish, to get lost among trees or the waves. I will work 9 to 5, breathe in air tainted by gridlock, and play my cards right so I can escape for a rustic vacation once or twice a year. Such a divide of desires, wanting both to swim in civilization and crowds of strangers, but also float along in the absence of both.

I fear that I and the company I keep will forget how to be spontaneous, say the wrong but honest thing, and see recreation as limited only to the gym and other designated areas.

I am excited to have the chance to get the job I want, but am concerned about its location, which does not include my newly-signed lease or girlfriend.

But, as I type here on the couch I have spent so many hours trying to summarize myself into a cover letter, trying to start my life in this city, I am sure I can go to a new place, instead of fighting to be part of a place where I may just not belong. I cried this morning because my post-graduation plan has yet to run on schedule, that I could not see what I would be doing a month or more from now. That this inability to control aspects of my life or reach my intended goals are failures on my part. I have accepted that I can not predict my future, and the only reason I have been wanting to is out of fear of the unknown. I would not want to harness the sound of waves hitting rock with the limitations of Western musical notation in order to predict its rhythm. Same as I have concluded that it is futile to try and predict the timing of my life or the lives of others, for my wisdom will always be less than what chance will bring.

My mom told me of her favorite movie, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and shared with me her favorite line from it, delivered by Bob Dylan's character Alias:

"I can live anywhere, I can leave anywhere, too."