To find a home:

Do you ever wonder if where you are is where you need to be? I often find myself yearning for some environment other than the one wherever I may presently be. Maybe it's wanderlust or maybe I've been spoiled by having the opportunity to see a lot of places, but it seems that whenever I'm in a city (which currently is quite often), I miss open spaces: the smell rain and hay bales, a sky that is never black but a deep star-dotted indigo, miles of nothing but fields and trees. Yet, on the other hand, once I've been in a place such as that for--eh--a week, I miss the give-and-take of city life, the interpersonal contact, the boisterousness and spontaneity.

Everyone has heard someone else say, "The grass is always greener on the other side," and probably proceeded to get really irritated with that someone for his or her lack of understanding. Your situation was different, more complex, not that simple. Sure. For me at least, I'm beginning to think these people were on to something--whether they were aware of it or not--because it seems that in my imagination, where I could be is always better than where I am. Is it lack of appreciation? Lack of Inspiration? Or just some misguided belief that whatever is missing in my life can be found in some other location?

Or better yet, maybe the longing to leave for a particular destination (or even to stay in one) is not the hope of finding something there, but the hope of rediscovering whatever it was in yourself that you found there. Perhaps it's not the boundless ocean I want to be close to, or fields or muscadines or mountains or anything physical; perhaps I want to be able to recognize my own nature and tendencies, both visceral and existential, in a hug from my roommate before we walk into the city, and in seeing a tourist knocked down in the break zone of the tide, and in just walking outside and feeling like no one has ever smelled a freshly mown lawn just as I am smelling it then.

Sometimes, it's a shame we can't be in all places at once.

Wander on.