LETTING GO
Before every trip I’ve made in the last three and a half years, ten or more for a month or two, it is hard to keep track, I first feel a reluctance to pick up and go to an unknown place that makes me think I am making a mistake and creates a feeling o paralysis, but then a week or so before I leave something in my shifts and I begin to feel anticipation and rising excitement so that when it is time to get on the plane I have already left this place behind and all the things that weigh me down and seem so important here.
It is Wednesday evening and I leave on Monday. I haven’t packed yet but it doesn’t take long to pack a backpack and a carryon bag. It was just a week ago that I suddenly got the yearning to move to Marshall to live in Capitola, an old cotton mill now subdivided into apartments.
For a week I have been been preparing to move at some point, trying to deal with all the complexities of moving, whether I could afford it, what I would have to do before I moved and on and on. Suddenly I was in a very practical mode and the trip seemed like a terrible idea.
But the closer I get to stepping on the plan the less I worry about moving. Suddenly none of those concerns seem to matter. I’ll go with the flow. If I am able to move when I get back, I will. If everything falls apart and I am not moving, so be it. All the stress of moving falls away. And all of this is happening because something inside me is shifting and letting go. I know that when I sit in the plane everything I have been fretting about for a week will vanish. I will just begin floating along in a place where I don’t speak the language, don’t know the customs, have no idea how, this time, I might be conned or robbed, no idea of what I am going to do when I get there.
When this happens I will just be floating along, almost in a dream, with all the tensions and worries I’ve felt this week gone. I’m not willing what happens, it just happens on every trip I make, something inside me lets go, a process that is already happening.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 