truer words were never spoken

Gamble everything for love,
if you’re a true human being.
-- Rumi

how much is too much?

it happens sometimes. a high-speed-come-apart. i've probably spent the better part of the last year gearing up for this meltdown. i mean, let's recap.

in the past year, i have lived in three timezones, on two coasts, and in between two rivers in the middle of the country. my heart was shattered, i adopted my baby scarlet, i left my music box steps for an abode inside the beltway, and fell in love en route. after a six month relationship, i got engaged, got fired, moved to st. louis, and started a new job. and now, i'm less than two months shy of a wedding i never wanted in the first place (i'm a barefoot on the beach sans an audience kinda bride), and that's the straw that's breaking my back.

and it's not just all that. i mean, that's a fucking lot, but it's more that i live in this new city (and don't get me wrong, i love st. louis, a lot) where i don't have any tier-one friends around the corner, and i guess i just feel lonely. and maybe that's where i'm meant to be as i march toward this next phase in my life. maybe this is the right time for inner reflection and identity struggle. and it's hard. i'm sad sometimes, mad sometimes, bored sometimes. and i find myself longing (desperately sometimes) for the life i so desperately sought to abandon just a short year ago.

i find myself longing for my life on the music box steps, missing my flat, my deck, my view from schneider's door. i miss the ghetto birds overhead, that stretch of sunset boulevard below, pho cafe, ghetto sushi, brunch at dusty's, and naeun, edith, and colleen. i miss the scent of jasmine from everywhere and nowhere. i miss the park at the bottom of the steps and the rickety wooden stairs at the top. i miss 4100 and my favorite bartender, superman. i miss feeling like nothing mattered and that life was a fair breeze blowing at my whim. i miss not wanting more, not spending my days preparing for all the complicated life is becoming.

and as much as i miss all that simplicity, i also remember that i left because it didn't fit anymore. i remember that i wanted all the complicated my life is becoming. and i still do. i just wish it wasn't so hard, that it didn't hurt so much, that it wasn't so lonely. and i wish i would have known that this in-between stage would be so uncomfortable, because maybe then i wouldn't be so mad, so sad, and so often so out of sorts...

~k

saying goodbye

i've lived the best three years of my life on the music box steps, which makes it especially hard to say goodbye. and especially easy too.

they all come and go in waves: nostalgia, daring, sadness, excitement, fear, lady luck. and in the center of all the madness, there is a perfect calmness. because it's time. and i'm ready.

all roads i want to travel depart from washington. i'm pretty sure we all know this. and it would seem that i'm finally ready to go pick one out. if only there weren't that pesky goodbye thing involved.

there are so many things i love about LA, so many smells, tastes, sights, and places simply delight my life. and staying here forever, indulging in what makes this place so beautiful, wouldn't suck. at all. but it wouldn't be a challenge either. and i like adventure way too much to settle into the [not unappealing] facile.

so brushing away my tears, off i go.

~k