New chapters and perhaps this isn’t really a new chapter at all. It is a different volume all together. Like the encyclopedias we used to have as kids. A different book entirely but of the same collection. Gold letters embossed on a deep blue cloth spine. I’m here. And I’m not yet. I’m still in the hallway…the liminal space. I’ve closed a door, a chapter, put an entire volume on the shelf and I’m waiting for life to start. And maybe that’s a weird thing to do. Because life is everyday. It’s this moment, or it’s none. I’m in the desert. In Morocco and it feels like home. Like calm. Like I’ve arrived even if I don’t really know what that means yet. I feel a little whiplash in a way, emotionally. It was 3 months of working crazy hard every day to be ready to go. It was crying myself to sleep thinking of leaving my nieces. Of pre-mourning the loss of being in the daily rhythm of lost teeth and earring changes and, “Auntie! Listen to this!” But if I had stayed in Denver, my time with them was over in the way it was. I wouldn’t be in the guest room where I can hear the call for “maaammmaaaa” at 6 am, I would be in my own place somewhere away from them. I’m grateful my life fell to pieces in a way so that I could have that time with them, living with my sister, being part of daily rhythms, being folded into family in a way that is so rare in real life. It’s my favorite place I’ve lived, because it was home. They are home. And now I am here in a place that is home in my bones. Everyday I say, wow, thank you. I cried at sunset in the dunes the other day simply because it was so beautiful. And the days are days and I don’t have a plan other than to keep listening. The rhythm here is so different. It is slow. It is talk. It is wait. It is the washing machine took out the power, so you wash in a bucket in the shower until your limbs are sore instead of writing in the sun. It’s the neighbors hooking your house to theirs with an extension cord, so you have power too because you take care of each other. It is coffee and sunsets. Watching camels walk in the sand.
It took me so long to get here it feels sort of anticlimactic. There weren’t really any goodbyes, just some hugs and see you sometime. And maybe that’s best. Maybe that’s all my nervous system could take. And in a way I’ve been leaving for a few years. Slowly by slowly and so who is to believe this time I’m actually going? I used to walk around art fairs and think to myself, “My work is as good as any of this. I could be in this show.” And then I would say to myself, “Yes, but these people actually did it. That’s the difference.” So, I signed up, and was in art fairs, just like that. And maybe surprisingly, moving countries feels a bit the same. You just decide and then you do it. And I think I was so paralyzed for so long in the wanting but not doing phase that everyone around me got tired of it….so this time…the first time I actually feel like I’m leaving, I’m moving, everyone is like cool see you sometime. There was no fanfare, there was nothing acknowledging this shelving of a volume, the closing of a chapter that felt as monumental as my inner world was processing. My life as I know it so far. On a shelf. Closed in a dark blue cloth cover and put away. I think that’s nicer, softer and also more confusing in a way. I’m here in the hallway, not quite here and for sure no longer there and everyone is continuing on living their lives. I’ve shelved a volume of the encyclopedia of my life and begun another. I’m running down the road in the middle of the Sahara watching the clouds move over the dunes and a group of camels make their way south. And this is my life right now. For today. And tomorrow. And maybe we don’t need to know more than that. Maybe we don’t need to have anything figured out. Maybe I can lean into trusting that everything is going to work out, that it always does, that I’m held. And safe. And loved.
