Hours from now I’ll be on a bus headed north for Montpelier. From all over the world — literally — a small band of like-minded folks will be descending on the smallest state capital in the United States. We’ll be there to reconnect, recharge, and retreat. We’ll also be there to stay up way too late talking, eating cafeteria food made by culinary students, and frantically making decisions about how to spend our next semester actively pursuing a collective dream.
It doesn’t happen in a vacuum, by accident, or without support. Though these dates have been in place for over six months, this residency is turning out to be a real household wrecker. While I’m up north Suze is working frantically on a case that may send her south for a few days at the same time. I know Suze has kept the details from me to avoid making me feel bad about leaving — to keep from feeling I’m abandoning everyone and everything — and to be honest, I don’t know what I could contribute as a solution even if I were up on everything. She’s got her mother coming for a few days, she’s working the connections of friends in town to keep an eye on the girls in the afternoons before she gets home from work. Even though lectures and workshops are going to be fully engaging, it’s going to be hard not to wonder (and worry) about things at the homestead when my attention drifts.
Then there’s the pending CT, the critical thesis. This is the semester I’m charged with pouring some great bit of wisdom at length into something graduate-worthy. This has been freaking me out almost since the beginning and it’s hard to imagine it’s going to go as smoothly as people tell me it will. The CT, this residency, it all reminds me of when I was a Boy Sprout and we’d stand at the trail head at the beginning of a backpacking trip. We’d know how many miles we were headed, where camp was, starting and ending elevation, but that first step seemed so impossibly far away from the last. And when it was over it semed as if the first step was so insignificant compared to some of the others along the way. It also seemed a lot shorter than the actual time spent, like somehow time fluctuates to make the monumental insignificant, magnifies the minute into momentous, and makes the whole process strange and horrible and wonderful and new and old all at once.
I’ve got ten days ahead of me that are both familiar and unknown to me. When it’s over I’ll come home and all of this stress and anxiety will evaporate, replaced by stories and the comfort of order.
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One part of me wants to keep up with what’s going on here in blog land, to keep a running diary of rez and all that happens, and the reality is that if I have any spare moments I’m going to want to check in at home or keep up with emails and whatnot. So if I go dark for a few weeks, trust that somewhere else everything is much brighter.
Much love and public appreciation to Suze who is making this possible, despite some incredible obstacles on all fronts. I owe you some Oreo truffles, among many other things, sweeite.
