home

think of a baseball game when a runner rounds the bases and slides into home plate. that feeling of joy and relief. being safe.

that is what it feels like to come home.

our house in bakersfield reminds me of the layers and layers of my life. from high school to college to graduate school. bakersfield, the bay, austin, south texas, santa barbara. recuerdos from all of those places, eras. pictures and books; christmas cards and wedding invitations; journals, close to fifty of them, beginning in 1991.

they are the most significant archival material of my relatively insignificant life.

this evening i read half of summer 2000.

there are some great passages about traveling in mexico with my best friend, olivia. she's married now and has a 6 month old baby boy.

that summer we were unfettered. we visited museums and churches, learned danzon, met relatives, flirted with cute boys, traipsed through a national park in the rain, had food poisoning, slept in dirty hotels, and pulled all-nighters dancing. took planes and cars and buses to and from mexico city, aguascalientes, el puerto de veracruz, jalapa, and guadalajara. it was at once exhausting and exhilirating.

the funny thing about some of the non-travel journal entries is that there are issues that still linger, even five years later. career and relationship stuff mostly. i wonder what the texture of the next layer of my life will be.

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