I've been waiting for my mind to catch up to the innumerable significant events that have occurred in the past 2 weeks, but it's gone into hibernation. As a writer, the biggest roadblock my craft faces is that I am inspired at the most inopportune moments. Emotions and diatribes are inspired on subways, in the grocery store, walking down the street, when I'm 3 hours in to a 12 hour work day and I have grown weary of acknowledging my thoughts and so, I don't take notes and my voice is lost. My voice is lost in the chaos of existing day to day. I daydream of Taos and the clarity I felt so high in the mountains, the effortlessness my voice experienced, the vast unexplored region of my thoughts unveiled themselves and for the first time in my life, I felt free. But then friends died, my heart was desecrated by ruthless misunderstanding, other friends (close friends) were met with crisis and I found myself on the phone for hours dissecting and analyzing the meanings of these life-altering events; all my energy expelled in participating in life rather than reserving my energy for writing.
And that brings us to now, this very moment, where I am sitting on the back porch of the house I'm convinced I will buy in the not-so-distant future, debating what it is I want to convey, what emotions I care to capture, and I'm drawing a blank. How do I convey the enormity of change that has taken place since my arrival in California? Just telling you, the blog, you, the blog audience, what's occurred isn't as simple as a timeline. The censorship of privacy is suffocating, as the secrets of my beloveds are necessarily safeguarded lest these relationships face the guillotine should I disrespect those boundaries. How to write about it all and not lose anyone, or my dignity, this is the challenge of my lifetime.



Ryan arrived by train on Wednesday. I sat in the Amtrak outdoor waiting station, blinding tears of anticipation making it impossible to enjoy Bukowski. His train was early, as was I. In the moments before its arrival, I saturated my spirit in the West Coast sun, begging the Bay breeze to cleanse his heart the moment he stepped onto the platform. My best friend, one of the most intricate beings on the face of the Earth rode a train 52 hours, with 3 overflowing suitcases and a broken heart. His silence throughout the trip settled my anxiety, knowing that the experience of seeing the world through observation car window panes must be having an effect on his perspective. Naively convinced (as I was) that California is always warm enough for shorts, it was no sooner that his train had halted than I spotted him with a plastic clothing knapsack slug over his shoulder, garbed in a petticoat, Tom Sawyer cap, cut off denim shorts and a 50 lb suitcase dramatically altering his balance. I walked briskly, nearly running, convinced that if I didn't reach him in time he'd disappear like a mirage. Our smiles stretched so broadly, the muscles in our faces creaked with months of disuse. His suitcase crashed to the ground as we screeched and threw our arms around one another. It was an inevitable reunion and with Vodka on his breath and a slight stammer to his speech, there were no words for acknowledging that we have found a home in one another. The days to follow have blended together, filled with conversations we've been meaning to have since his October departure. Our mothers are equally relieved that we are together, their fears about our distant travels are not silenced by the reassuring courage we feel when on the road. They think only of our aesthetic safety and there's no convincing them that we're safe unless we are together. It's in knowing this that I know how fated our friendship is and how true my love is for him.



We are so many things to one another. He is the person I unveil my most deeply-rooted fears to, the person who criticizes my driving and leaves me voicemails recounting how terrified he is of the dive bombing hornet that's made its way into our apartment. He's the person whom I trust to help smudge my new home, knowing our combined spiritual well being can drive out any negative force, the person who takes my heaping pile of belongings and turns the house into a home; a home I now share with him. He's the person I lay next to in bed and in front of the fireplace and laugh until my bones hurt.
Upon his arrival, I realized that I'd never felt our bond disconnected. He stepped off the train just as I'd always known him, and it felt more like I'd picked him up from work rather than a 4-month excursion to Chicago. Nothing had changed between us, but within us, we are filled with the wonderment of the world experienced in the others absence. For months I begged the Universe to tend to the wound left by his departure. I had felt whole in his presence and then broken and disbursed when he was gone. It was impossible not to be grateful that he'd found love and I'd found ambition, but the homesickness was at its worst when I was still in Kansas and he was braving the Chicago winters.


Wednesday night drinking and gourmet pizza in Berkeley was followed by two days of SF wandering. His overwhelmed silence and then verbal outbursts, falling everywhere on the emotional spectrum, taught me to be silent once again. My voice feels small in the shadow is his heartache. The psychic we visited in Haight asked me about the man I love and suggested that we are fated. His reading suggested that his California experience will not be the last of his travels. This is the sort of love I find myself within often, one that is consistently present within my heart, but not always tangible. The psychic told me that my aura is blotched with distrust and abandonment, entrenched for decades, and that romantic love will be impossible for me until I cleanse my spirit...but this man, she said, this man will always be the one you love without the fear, without the wall. There is nothing he could of ask me that would be too much, and nothing I wouldn't give to ensure his happiness. It is an unusual love, but it is what I trust in most.