What To Do In Illyria

It seems that somewhere crossing the prairie, I lost my narrative thread. I feel untethered and windblown. I don't know my lines. I have no back-story. It is the wonderful and the terrible thing about moving to a new life and starting over. Nobody knows any of my formers selves. It is liberating but a daunting task, starting life over from scratch. I try to write and fail. I go for hikes or splash in the creeks with friends. At night we stay up too late, half the neighborhood, drinking delicious spicy margaritas and watching the last efforts of the perseids. There are fires, music, gardens. The children run through houses likes packs of marauding wolves and everyone I meet is from somewhere else. In the morning I can only sit up dazed, blinking in the tree-shrouded dawn, and wait to see which shapes are real and which are only phantoms to burn off with the mist.


I get to decide what becomes of this life. Like a vision board lies blank before me, no past dragging it down, and I can pin to it whatever I want. So far I've selected only: meditation, hikes, and saying yes. It takes a moment of reckoning to convince myself that it's all right to be happy here. I don't know why I'm this way. I'm afraid if I let go of other things--dreams of Paris, dreams of Santa Fe--I'll never have them. But this isn't true. The truth is, if I don't let go of them, I'll never have what's right here, now. I'm just traveling, I've decided. With no set routes, only bright changing stars. If I have no final destination, I'll never be lost.