The cyclical nature of things
The spiral brings us back around to see people and places made new again
There’s no more accurate mirror to reflect the passage of time than returning to a place—or person—at different periods of your life.
Everything within and without is cyclical in nature, but when you come back around, the change that has transpired since the last time you were there becomes so obvious. We keep learning, remembering, forgetting; shedding layers or picking up baggage that needs discarded. These reunions show us who we are and who we were.
This idea crystallized for me when I returned to Albuquerque this month. It hadn’t occurred to me, when I’d planned the stop here—pinned by an important doctor’s appointment—that I would be in the same town, in fact the same friend’s house, sitting on the same bed working on my laptop in the same month I was here doing all this four years ago, when I was just coming off the road. Only this time, I was just getting back on the road—and feeling like a completely different person than the one who’d arrived here in 2019.
I know now what it feels like to spend four years alone, how it can both wear on and clear your psyche, how you become more sensitive to energy, especially dysfunctional energy. I know now what it feels like to go through a pandemic alone, to lose every source of income in one fell swoop in a city far away from my network. I know the experience of being wheeled down a hospital hallway in the middle of the night for emergency surgery and realizing no friends or family know I’m there. I learned that grieving the loss of very important people is not something that gets easier with practice. And I know now what arroyos are and to not call the Spanish here Mexican and to *never* call the Spanish here native. I know the roasted chilis at those roadside stands are not dry roasted, and Meow Wolf is the coolest music venue in America.
And so on.
I hadn’t thought about how being back in this place at this time of year might affect me, how surreal and telling it might be. Albuquerque was a stopping place en route to South Dakota until I got here. Now it feels like a force larger than me, for reasons unbeknownst to me, pulls me here to this place during the most pivotal times of my life. Four years ago, I was exhausted and done with the road. This time, the road is calling me back out to it.
As an aside, I also realized the Staples here—where I’d stopped four years ago to print a manuscript and then vlog outside about finally finishing it and also getting a job offer in Santa Fe—is the same Staples I’ve been using for my mail forwarding service. There’s not much magic or synchronicity in that, I know, but it was a strange sensation, how this particular Staples has served me, then and now, without me putting any thought into it (I’ve never even shopped there).
And then there are the people of a place. So many people are tied to place in my memory; a few have transcended it.
Another gift of road life is seeing and reconnecting with people—some longtime friends and others, quite honestly, who I probably would have not seen again for the rest of my life, had I not gone on the road. There are a few artists I interviewed briefly 10+ years ago for my day job who now feel like family after staying with them while traveling. I’ve reconnected with people from college who have since moved to places all over America. I’ve reconnected with people who were once best friends who I’d lost touch with for 10-20 years.
And the land, reconnecting with the land. Seeing certain plants and trees at certain times of the year, bodies of water, roads … these feel like reunions with old friends, too. Here in Albuquerque, my favorite plant, chamisa, was just starting to bloom as I arrived.
✦ I am back on Mountain Time! Which is the best time zone, obviously …
✦ In a first in New Mexico history, I have been getting bitten by mosquitos ever since I got here.
✦ A favorite spot here: Elena Gallegos Open Space. I go up there, just outside of Albuquerque, to write and draw and hike (there are a couple trails) and watch the Sandias turn red at sunset. I was happy to get in a short visit this week.
✦ A night I’d forgotten that my sister reminded me of this week, and it made me smile: “Remember when you and I got drunk and wrote random compliments for people and left on their cars?” (if you got a note on your windshield in Hagerstown circa 2011, that was us)
✦ Cocorosie, one of my favorite bands, has a new single out. It’s pretty great.
✦ I really am going east … but very, very slowly.
writing
ebooks + zines
astrology readings
get postcards and snail mail
send snail mail: 9701 Montgomery N.E. #1057, Albuquerque, NM 87111
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I’m feeling your energy. And enjoying your writing. 💕