May 8, 2015

Holland, MI.


I was right about the warm weather.

It makes all the difference to smell the grass and honeysuckle again.

Georgia had little for me. But Lake Michigan makes me miss the gulf.

Maybe its all gotten to be too much. Montauk last summer, the river in Antwerp, the canals in Amsterdam, the Seine in Paris, the briny Pacific off the coast of Vancouver. It's all beautiful, but it only makes me feel far away.

I'm rarely homesick. But this week, the thought of Savannah makes me want to cry.

How do you be in love but be apart? My feelings for the South mirror my feelings for him: heady, lazy, thick. Everything I want to leave and everything I long to return to.

I can't distinguish the line between theory and practice.

I keep taking things too far, but never finishing the task.

He was right when he said "We talk to much. We think too much." My only response was to climb out of the car and pack my bag.

I haven't unpacked since.

But the weather is warm, and Joy and I are going camping today.

If growth is happening, its happening in these simple tasks my dad never quite taught me to do: chopping fire wood, driving the highway, pitching a tent, loving and not leaving.