The comforts of staying

I bought some hot apple cider this afternoon and took a walk around Boulder, fogging up my sunglasses with cinnamon-nutmeg steam.

I forget how much I love autumn. I wrote a short story last year about "the season of turmeric and spices, of osmanthus and scarf-worn longing." Today there was a scarf — a red one, my favorite, that my friend Christian bought for me in India — but there was no longing. Just appreciation, a kind of breath-driven inner peace, the kind you feel after a deep stretch.

I love knowing a city so well. I know that when I walk past a certain cafe that my best friend's boyfriend will be in there, working away on his next book. I know that the bathroom code to the local bookstore changes every week, and I always remember it until it no longer works. I know which intersections are always okay to cross even when the lights are green, because they're hardly ever used.

I know it will take me 12.5 minutes to walk from my work to my favorite local gourmet deli, where I harass them for their wild Alaskan house-cured salmon. I love learning through Facebook that a favorite cafe — where Christian and I would discuss our impending plans to travel the world over mochas and scones — is now serving hot apple cider, made from locally-grown apples; I love that I can walk there from my job, which is less than .5 miles away, because everything is less than .5 miles away.

I love that last night, as I was eating a delicious squash risotto with my close girl friend at my favorite restaurant, the bar manager — also my ex and friend — pointed at a table of diners and said, "They grew that squash you're eating."

I love feeling like I'm the only one who knows where a beautiful tea house is right downtown, because there's hardly anyone there. I love having places to retreat outside of my home, and not having every inch of my city crowded with people.

I love knowing that at least one out of five of my closest friends will likely be at the local "herban" bar at any given point on a late afternoon, working on art, illustration, writing, or just drinking jun.

I like growing, and discovering that when I really want to live in a place — the settle-down kind of live — it will probably be a smaller city, because I just like knowing. My life is filled with going and staying, but I am gaining so much in the process.

And when it comes to Boulder — I'm so glad I stayed.

Perfumed chaos and the lack of middles

I am a wreck.

I am so on top of things for my leaving-the-country move that it is driving me insane. I tried to pay a parking ticket too early, before the city of Denver even put the citation number into their database. Then I tried to pay it again, and again, for a total of three times, and it is still not there.

The problem with this is that there is no middle ground for me. I am either on top of things, or I am not. I can either pay this ticket now, or when I come back from Spain I will owe the city of Denver enough money to build some new high-tech infrastructure.

I was talking to my sister Kristi about this when I went to Hawaii for her wedding a few weeks ago. There are people who are good at beginnings (starting projects, maybe not so good at follow-through) and those who are good at endings (final pushes, the procrastinators who do their best work at midnight before deadline). And everything in between, every combination therein. Some are good at all (Obama? maybe?).

I am a beginning and ending person. I've seen this in myself in all aspects of life, even in chess games. I am really great at opening and end-game, but in the middle I become so confused and lose my queen.

And now I am acting like I am moving out tomorrow. There are a lot of things going on for me — loneliness, anxiety, fear of the unknown, appetite issues, mild depression, fear of nighttime — but I don't want to sit with my emotions right now because they are too pointy. I am trying to outrun them by remaining chaotically busy.

What I do know is that when I come back to the states, all of my best clothes are going to smell like Glad Forceflex perfumed garbage bags (the label said "odor eliminating," not "odor infusing"), for better or worse. And in two weeks — I won't be thinking about this at all until I return, whenever that may be.

I just need to breathe some Spanish air. Now.

Hello, I'm moving to Spain

Probar is a Spanish word I have a love affair with. It was not taught to me, or one that I sought out. It's a word that soaked into me on creamy, orange-scented streets in Barcelona.

On a Sunday morning in October 2007 I was trying to remember how to ask to try something—that something was Spanish wine at an open air market.

I started to get nervous, and when I get nervous I forget things, and forgetting things makes me nervous. I took a breath and stopped. I listened.

"¿Puedo probarlo?" "¿Puedo probar el vino?"

Probar. Yes! I lovingly borrowed it from the Spaniards around me and used it for myself—and had a remarkably full conversation with the merchant. I sipped red wine in the late October sunshine before continuing to wake up with a café cortado and cruasán de chocolate at an outdoor café. Classic, and perfect.


And two years later, on Nov. 3, 2009, I will be moving to Spain.

I haven't used the word "moving" yet. I've been telling people that I'm "going," or "traveling to." But there isn't a definite time period I'm going for. It's reliant upon money, I suppose, and isn't moving to any city the same way, if you're going there without a job?

Besides. "Moving" sounds so, so good. It feels right to me.

People in the U.S. generally use the word "moving" when they've been guaranteed a job at their new location. Or they have specific housing set up. I don't. I don't even know for sure if I'll be traveling around the country on my own or if I'll be staying in one place for three months teaching, then traveling, or doing both at the same time. I have no idea. And I love that, too.

I don't need to move "into" anywhere, or "for" something. I'm moving my self, my body, my spirit. I'm letting go of my apartment that I've been in love with since the day I serendipitously found it. I'm moving to jolt my soul, because it enjoys the invigoration. And it doesn't hurt to gather more experience, good or bad, for my writing life.

I am and always have been in love with everything Spanish: Spanish language, Spanish culture, Spanish food, the Spanish accent, Spanish dance... everything. I'm not sure why. It's not something I cultivated. It's just always been dancing around inside myself, and I need to bring it out and let it flutter around for a while.

For a "moving" kind of while.


Images: #1, Barcelona, Amy Segreti; #2, Malaga, Flickr user -N-Root-

This Life is For Exhaling

He was asking her if she thought she would stay here forever.

"I think sometimes that I want to get out of New York," he was saying, the way people do when traveling, "but I don't know if I want to leave in a way where I don't have access to it anymore."

I was sitting in the booth behind this pair at a Nepalese restaurant in the small mountain town of Nederland, the sweet potato masala melting along my tongue like hot marshmellows.

"I'm not sure if I'll stay here forever," the woman replied. I couldn't see her face, but her voice sounded like it came from a deeper place, wooded with experience. "I just know that I wake up every morning and I feel so..." She paused. "Sane."

I watched her titter her head from side to side in laughter—her white hair not a rigid nest but filled with movement, a puffed dandelion globe allowing light to flow through it. Her neck moved with a lengthy suppleness, like she'd spent her life looking in many different directions.

He was younger, and I could see him perfectly. Maybe a son, a nephew of hers. He looked displaced. His face looked planned, like it was created from a blueprint, and in the background there were city lights and purpose-driven stares. He had the east coast etched into him, much like I did. Or maybe didn't anymore.



I like to carry around pendants, talismans from the east—shiny Bebe purses, determined facial expressions, a defensive, city strut. To people here, I am an east coaster; to friends from home, I am a mountain hippie. My friend who works on Capitol Hill in Washington tells me that Boulder has made me soft, that living here has clouded my rational mind. But maybe it needed some clouding, some wetness gently raining from it, watercoloring my edges.

I needed to know what it felt like to be in the mountains, to feel overtaken by a ridiculous variety of natural forces, all coexisting at once. I needed to be consumed by these rugged cliffs, clawed into by the edges of the sky. It has been beautiful; I have heard the crack of my soul opening here. It is worth becoming soft for this.



I stopped being able to hear the couple, except for the woman saying, "I can keep such a low profile here." I wondered if she was someone famous, an author, an artist, or someone who just wanted to be alone. I wondered when I would get to an age where I could live in a town like Nederland, just 15 miles west of Boulder but uncountable degrees more solitary, with almost no cell phone service and a village-size town center.

I will, someday, when I have collected enough experiences to bloat the walls of my small mountain house. They will funnel through me onto paper and I will not need to go anywhere else, because accessing cities will be as easy as turning a page. And my life will exist in an exhale.


Images: #1, "Keep me company," Flickr user Trcybrr; #2, CO landscape, Amy Segreti