"They Say Goldfish Have No Memory... and the Little Plastic Castle is a Surprise Every Time."

The leaves are beginning to change here, and as I start to explore my new environment I find little things over and over that take my breath away. It doesn't take much to thrill me. I enjoy finding little winding roads that take me by interesting places, or finding out that this backstreet connects to that one and realizing that suddenly I know where I am. I've learned to enjoy the simplest things in life: the way autumn paints the trees with henna and saffron, the crest of mountains in the distance, the way my dog looks up at me after a long walk with so much adoration in his sweet face. I weave all these things together and blanket myself with their comfort.

The hardest part for me is that I keep thinking about the person I wanted to share all of this with. Every time I see something incredible my first instinct is still to tell him all about it, and I have to remind myself that the only reason I'm enjoying any of this is because he made it clear that he would never commit to me. Given the choice of loving me forever or losing me forever, he chose to lose me. No amount of beautiful landscape has made that knowledge easy.

I don't mind so much being alone. I enjoy my own company, and being alone has never really bothered me. It's the sudden absence that unsettles me, and I need time to get used to it again. When you've had someone in your life for four years who's been your lover and your best friend, it's hard to reprogram yourself so quickly. In so many ways, it feels as though someone has died. You can make comparisons to that without even trying very hard, because what has passed away is the person who used to love you. The person who looked at you in such a way, who fit to you like spoons in a drawer, who made you laugh, who held your hand... that person is gone. In it's place is someone else that you don't know, a stranger who wears your lover's face.

I know that time will take care of that, will smooth away that pattern in my life like waves on the sand, but it's amazing how slowly time moves when you're in pain. So I find distractions and try not to think about Smaug, as we'll call him in these pages. Why Smaug? Well, in The Hobbit, Smaug is a dragon who sits around hoarding his gold and smoking. It seems like a fitting moniker for the man who told me marrying me would lead to him losing all his "amassed personal wealth," and who instead opted to replace me with a girl who found the 420 lifestyle as awesome as he does.

Strangely, I'm not sorry for what has happened. I did the right thing breaking up with him after he told me that marrying me would ruin his life. I did the right thing taking this job and moving out here. I would do those things the same way, because I believe that we all get what we deserve. So I get to be coddled by my company and live for free for at least a year in a beautiful new place, and Smaug gets to revert to the life of a frat boy, getting stoned every day and letting his house fall apart around him. Somehow I think I'm making out better.

Journey to the New World

Friday morning I made the journey from the old life to the new. I said goodbye to my mom before I got in the shower, and when I finished packing up my car I said goodbye to my dad. I gave him a peck on the cheek and a clap on the back, the way a son would. I did not get upset or weepy, because Pop considers that a sign of weakness, and he hates weakness. I managed to keep that up for about an hour into the trip, and then my cousin Gwyneth got to me.

She made me a road CD that was the first thing I played once I got in the car. Abba to Bon Jovi to Counting Crows to Disturbed and then the Cranberries… well, it actually sounded a lot like a couple of mix CD’s I’ve made for myself over the years. Everything was pretty carefree until I got to Track 12, and it caught me off guard as though I’d reached the bottom of the staircase but thought I had one more step to go. We watched a movie together Saturday, and my favorite Joni Mitchell song is on the soundtrack. I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear it, but when the first notes from “Case of You” came on that was it, and I cried through the whole song.

I don’t think it was weakness. I think it was mourning for all the things I’d dreamed that did not come to pass. Mourning is a necessary act if you want to start moving forward, and I’m moving on with my life in the most literal way possible.

On my way out of Philadelphia I noticed the way the Comcast building disappeared into the morning fog; the windows melting into the mist like a painting, incomplete on the canvas and longing to have its whole form. It was like that all day on the journey from old to new, and I saw some of the most incredible things on the way. I shed the places I knew like an old skin, leaving the Schuykill for the Turnpike and heading to points west.

I took the scenic route, and savored the things along the way as though I was enjoying a new wine. Without warning I came upon fields and fields of sunflowers, lining both sides of the highway, golden and unexpected like beacons of sunshine along the asphalt for over a mile. Mountains rose in the distance, a skyline new and unfamiliar, cloaked in fog and mysterious. As soon as I hit Maryland I could smell the most incredible barbeque, and Puppy woke up from his nap and started frantically sniffing the air looking for the heavenly source.

I turned onto this twisting highway that brings you down through the mountain, past a campsite and through the most breathtaking countryside rising up on either side of you. The foliage is so close to the road that it’s like an embrace, a caress of green and gray and brown with mist weaving its way through the leaves like a sentient thing, bright and shining off the headlamps like moonlight. This is how I came to be home. At that moment I felt that I would never leave this place.

It was the shower that sealed the deal though. The water pressure in my new apartment is so incredible that the act of cleansing is like a religious experience. I felt like the embodiment of “The Ecstasy of St. Theresa.” If I’d known any hymns, I would have sung them. As it was the tile had to settle for “Seasons of Love” from Rent. I do what I can.

Mame came in for a couple of days to help me settle in. I took her to my favorite restaurant here (hey, I find all the important shit first), and found that they had customized our menus to welcome me to the area. Classy. They gave us copies and I hung mine on the fridge. Mame forgot hers, because it takes a lot more to impress her so she really didn’t care to keep it. Okay, I was kidding about that part.

The best thing about having Mame here is that the place automatically felt like home. She helped me rearrange some furniture and unpack some boxes, but it was really her physical presence that gave the place what it needed. Friends bring what you need to where you are. Friendship, like family, isn’t a place but a feeling.

So here I am, day three of my new life. So far, I love it here. I walk Puppy and everyone I meet is very kind, and I look at the mountains off in the distance and marvel at the view. The neighbors offer me tips on what’s around and how I can find important things, like the library and the hospital. Now I’m sitting in my new apartment looking out the windows, excited to be here right before the leaves begin to change, so that we can be in metamorphosis together.