I wish I knew what I was doing for more than 10 days at a time. It seems to be the nature of my life recently that my ideas and feelings are an infinite knot that cannot straighten out so I can tie it into anything useful. I ended my last travels 3 months ago and returned home reluctantly filled with conviction that I will be gone by September, not knowing where, perhaps a farm in Holland or maybe Colorado? Within 2 weeks of being home I got a job at farmer markets collecting compost and doing outreach and education about composting in New York. SCORE! I mean for an environmental junkie in the coined urban jungle this is a gold mine and a great way to spend a few months before I leave, because I’m definitely leaving no matter what.
A few weeks later, the job is still great but my hands are 10 feet in front me keeping everything back. I’m not staying and I’m not happy, as Kundera said, no man (or woman) can be happy when they long to leave the place they live. Holland falls by the wayside so does thoughts of Colorado and I realize that I can’t seem to straighten out this knot; I’m leaving, as I’ve said, but where am I going? So I start putting my hand down. I come to the conclusion I will stay until after the New Year, I missed the holidays last year and it seems pointless to do that again. So now what I have 6 months left here I’m going to need to figure out how to be a part of something.
A few weeks after that my job completely transforms everything, I started meeting so many artists, writers, and other environmental minded folks. There are farms where I can get paid to work in upstate NY? People own permaculture design businesses here? Your friend works in waste prevention? You want to build a tiny house in the middle of the woods too? Let’s make dinner sometimes and design our future tree houses!!! There is this promise of opportunities and the life I have wanted right here under my nose and I am finally starting to smell it. But so what? I’m leaving remember.
There are all just promises leaving or staying, at any point something can and probably will break no choice will be permanent, but that isn’t what really matters anyway. Right now I am just trying to wiggle the end point out of a knot without making another knot so I have something to concrete to hold onto. But everything is shifting, and I spend hours listening to youtube playlists and occasionally finding things like, what should I do with my life, while googling places to live in the Pacific Northwest. Places that aren’t too expensive, or pretentious, or hippie filled (is that even a problem?), and oh wait can I even find a job? Wait that farm looked awesome do I want to work there? Wait loans, right job. Wait are there even jobs that don’t require me to know how to treat water contamination? Then I close my eyes and listen to Hozier and wonder what is going on? Where am I being led to?
I haven’t written since I left Iceland. I guess I’ve been waiting to have something solid to say, but when you stand on ice playing with a knotted string all you can do is hop when you hear a crack, and try to hold onto the last knot you managed to untie or maybe tied, hard to tell.
My insistent seeking of certainty is the only consistency I’ve been experiencing, I might as well let go of that too.
displaced roots 