SOMETHING NEW

Relocating is a funny thing, especially when you don't do it for any reason other than just wanting to be somewhere different. It brings up lots of questions about destination and what it is you're hoping to run to as well as questions of escape and what it is you're hoping to leave behind. 

Mostly, I wanted to look at a map of the world and point to a new place and say "this is where I am now. I see the world from this angle." To feel like I'm taking up a different tiny slice of a globe. To give a physical sense of home to the love of my life. 

Of course there's something raw and precious about leaving a place you've known for so long. To say goodbye to the brutal Midwestern winter. Late nights on friends' couches playing games. Goodbye to Dara knowing your drink order the second you sit down at the Winchester. To the view of snow falling "up" out your window. To the beautiful and beguiling Lake Michigan. To the birthplace of Steampig!!!

To being a little something for everyone, and however inelegantly becoming everything for one person. 

It feels okay to long for an old home. It doesn't diminish my commitment to this new place. It feels more like keeping most of me in California and one really cold pinky toe in Michigan. Maybe in this place of endless summer, I will try to find in me an invincible winter. 

CHRISTMAS IN AN EMPTY TOWN

First holidays on the West coast. Old friends, pizza delivered to the bar, champagne and carnations.