The New Kid

Right now, I am drinking a giant mug of coffee. I made it. I drove to the grocery store, I bought the beans (ground, not whole), grabbed a small container of half and half from a cooler lit with fluorescent lights,and walked a linoleum floored aisle to one of the check out counters with a person behind the register. That person was polite. She smiled at me and asked how I was doing, like you do. She does not know where I live or that I like nail polish or what days I have off from work. So she did not ask or say anything else. I got into my car and drove home, watching the bike lane when I made turns and looking around in awe at the colors that fall creates. I locked my car and unlocked my front door and took my groceries out of their plastic bags, moving them into my refrigerator.
When I woke up this morning, I opened my bag of coffee (ground, not whole)and filled the machine that sits on my black marble counter. I took water straight from the tap, right out of the sink, and pressed "On." The walls of this home hold scent inside, like a hug. They don't let anything out. The don't let anything in. It seems normal for a home to smell like coffee in the morning. It is normal.
I made toast, too. I took two pieces of bread- that I purchased, took out of a plastic bag, and put into a pantry- and put them into a toaster. The toaster sits next to the coffee machine on the black marble counter. It is not rusty, and it's not even new. It toasts the two pieces of bread perfectly the first time, and I put them on my plate, buttered them and sat down by myself at my dining room table. I have a dining room and a table that sits inside, which is probably normal as well. This room smells like coffee, too, and there is a large window that shows more of those fall colors. The walls are painted, not white, and there are framed pictures hanging. The floor is cold. Much colder than I am used to, which is why I am wearing socks inside my slippers.
Today, I do not have to work. There is laundry to be done, and probably a visit to the grocery store. Again. I keep having to go back because there are things I keep forgetting. Like breakfast food. Or something to cook for dinner. Or dishwasher detergent. Things I have not had to think about for years now.
This day is not remarkable. The weather is doing what it should near the end of October in Colorado. If I were to drape a scarf around my neck, maybe my red one because it's soft and the color is nice when my skin is pale, no one would look twice. It would be something anyone around me might do. But I had to try that particular draping method in the mirror a few times before I got it right. They do seem to notice some things, though. Like the way I amble, slack-jawed, through a grocery store, overwhelmed and thrilled and drowning in options. They probably think that I am just slow. They get frustrated with me as I block part of the produce section. They don't know that I am looking, perplexed and bemused, at the hard mangoes on the table next to the giant, alien-head papayas, wondering if anyone thinks that those things are actually ripe or worth eating at all.
I feel childlike most times. As if that Peter Pan complex needed any encouragement. This is pretty awesome; Everything that should not be new is new. Everything that should not be fun is fun. Everything that should not be interesting is novel. Those seashore postcards became boring, and now I can look at the world that has surrounded the people I know and be curious about it, and not be tired of it.
Everyone should be able to do this. Every single person should drift away for long enough that nothing is ever beige again. Not even the produce section of a grocery store, or the simple, underappreciated act of making your own cup of coffee. I'm not sure how to maintain a feeling like this. The best way might to keep track of its progress and give yourself a nice stomp on the toe once in a while if the things around you are not keeping you awake enough. This requires an effort to stay awake, of course. Otherwise, you lose track. And then you are bored again, forgetting that everything around you is absolutely worth seeing.

For Sanity

I left St. John a week ago. At the time, I had no idea how I felt about that. I spent that travel day sad and stressed, trying to sort through the tangles in my head and figure out if leaving was really the right thing to do. For what it's worth, I am still not totally sure and I am prepared to regret the decision at least a little for most of forever. I don't suppose that leaving a beautiful place is ever easy. But as I left Maho, my friend and (sadly) former roommate, Megan, slipped me a little square envelope. She said, "Reading material. For when you have some time." That little envelope is the only thing that kept me inside my own skin the day I left. I know a few people who would probably feel the same way about what was inside...



From, "Through Painted Deserts: Light, God and Beauty on the Open Road," by Donald Miller.



*Author's Note:



I remember the sweet sensation of leaving, years ago, some ten now, leaving Texas for who knows where. I could not have known where, I could not have known about this beautiful place, the Oregon I have come to love, this city of great people, this smell of coffee and these evergreens reaching up into a mist of sky, these sunsets spilling over the West hills to slide a red glow down the streets of my town.

And I could not have known then that if I had been born here, I would have left here, gone someplace South to deal with horses, to get on some open land where you can see tomorrow's storm brewing over a high desert. I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; They have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to change... All my life I have been changing. I changed from a baby to a child, from soft toys to play daggers. I changed into a teenager to drive a car, into a worker to spend some money. I will change into a husband to love a woman, into a father to love a child, change houses so we are near water, and again so we are near mountains, and again so we are near friends, keep changing with my wife, getting our love so it dies and gets born again and again, like a garden, fed by four seasons, a cycle of change. Everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.

I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.

Only the good stories have the characters different at the end than they were at the beginning. And the closest thing I can liken life to is a book, the way it stretches out on paper, page after page, as if to trick the mind into thinking it isn't all happening at once.

Everything we were is no more, and what we will become, will become what was.