pffffft

blowing off the dust

When I traveled to santa barbara for the first time, for the orientation week for my phd, I took the bus from LAX to santa barbara. It was March, and brilliant sunny, and for part of the ride I had the pacific on one side and fields, green with something unrecognizable, on the other. I toyed with a little metaphor in my learning plan about those fields, that I knew something was growing but couldn't tell what the crop was yet.

On that first ride, in the half empty, lumbering and slow bus, I listened to Emmylou Harris' Wrecking Ball on my portable cd player. Mournful, wrapping my sense in slow motion. The green, the diamond sea pacific, the sun, the bus driver, the woman I'd met at the bus stop who never quite became a friend. Hope.

Three years ago, I came back to my empty loft after being in portland for a month. Played Josh Ritter -- tell me I got here at the right time. No cds anymore. I padded around barefoot, eating raspberry gelato out of the container, filled with the possibility of the man I'd been crafting an imagined future with, tapping into my keyboard in the wide bed in the eeyrie in portland.

A week later, he was wrapped around me, and the song rang in my ear. He warned me then that he thought we'd have trouble with each other's music. He listened so hard, wanted to hear me share myself. So much that didn't fit, so many false starts -- and so much that locked in as though we'd been born to wrap around each other.

Life in orbit for three years, shot through with hope and intense emotion and coffee stains. Airplanes, sheets, beaches, tears, disappointment. Finishing the phd, swinging my own wrecking ball.

Today I sit in the airport -- how many times does this make? -- waiting to fly west to finish our breakup. The raspberry gelato taste still on my tongue, no new soundtrack. Still wanting to grab at hope. Stains under my eyes. Feeling like I learn every lesson one relationship too late.