Not just any house.
It stood before me like some sort of beacon, a shepherding glow, a spotlight from heaven itself. It was old, a structure of age and history and unpretentious craftsmanship with slanted roof tops, one lower story and one upper, grand posts holding up a wooden front porch, and windows that could make you feel like you were seeing out in to the world from a different time. It was quaint with a small driveway, a squishy green lawn, and a massive billowing maple hugging the east side of its existence like a protective god. The lighting of the evening summer sun was hitting it just right, setting the west side aglow while leaving the other dotted in moving shadows of the maple leafs. I remembered those shadows as a child… I took it all in and breathed one deep sigh of the word, home.
I fell in love. I stood in front of it, transfixed, my fantasies suddenly unleashed. I wanted it. I wanted it like I haven’t wanted anything in a very long time. The want was deeper than materialistic desire. It was more than that. It was what this little house had suddenly inspired that sent me unexpectedly into a whirl wind romance with a decision I should’ve decided on a long, long time ago. I need to live here, I thought to myself. I need to live here, in the city, where I am surrounded by things that make me feel…compatible. People (yes, more than one) have been trying to tell me for years that I should move to New York City, and as though that’s been a divine dream for ages, it’s not probable in the least. But this? This was attainable.
I can adapt to just about any environment – my life has proven so. But in this moment of divine satisfaction from an environment that I’ve been subconsciously rejecting for ages, I realized that I was tired of adapting. I’ve always wanted to settle in a place where my potential could be challenged, but haven’t happened upon the right path for me to achieve it. This, was the right path. This, was Fate saying, “It’s time now.” I want to live where opportunity is a frequent pitch knocking on my door. I want to live where my soul can breathe un-constricted, where the atmosphere is fitting to who I am, benefitting the truest sense of my identity. I belong in the city. I always have. I’ve heard it said to me from both the voices of friends and from the voice in my heart, but have never had the means to make the journey in to getting there. But as I stood in front of that house the whispers of Fate were insistent: “Now, is the time…” And I believed it in one fell swoop of confidence and peace and resolution.
The one and only thing that’s kept me where I currently live is consequently the job that I love so dearly, but it’s so far away from the city, the very factor that has always kept the city option at bay. But not anymore, I decided. If I could keep my current job, and live here… I would be complete. I could reconnect with my genuine self and be liberated from the suffocation of living in a small pond that offers me nothing but mosquitos and cattails. Here. Here is the ocean I was meant to swim free in.
On my way home I began working out in my head how I could make it possible to have the best of both worlds. Finally being financially able to move out of my current situation, I had previously planned on finding an apartment in a small town outside the place I work, but now I was reconsidering. No, more than reconsidering. It was becoming a purpose, an obsessive goal I had no choice but to achieve. If I’m going to learn to love Minnesota, this is the water I need to plunge in to. It’s been years since I’ve had the moxie to do something reckless and life changing. It’s been years since my spirit has been alive enough to want it.
This blog has turned out to be more than a satirical creative exercise for me. In the beginning, that’s all it was supposed to be. I had decided to write it in hopes I could achieve something worth publishing locally, something that would get my foot in the door, something I could put on a query letter for the trilogy I want to make into my career. I began this journey with a sloppy sense of what I aimed to achieve. I tried to be organized. I tried to prove that I could be a journalist of sorts, a commited writer. I tried to do things that were just not probable to my budget, both time and money combined. I tried to do things above and beyond my average skills, and in most cases failed significantly. It was one vast, ambitious game of trial and error. Tis true with creation! It evolves and you never know what’s going to happen in the end. In some strange spiritual sense the art often becomes a thing of its own mind and takes you down paths you hadn’t intended to take. Life, is what it is. I went with the flow of my life to write this and in all of my honesty, vulnerability, disgusting self-deprecation, my whiney overflows of divulging my pathetic inadequacies of grief and depression and melancholy and rants and bitch fests, in all of my sappy interpretations and juvenile infatuations, deep thoughts on my sleeves and theatrical stage dances of the entire human emotional range, in all of my horribly written entries and in all of my most incredible and profound posts I can confidently say that I am completely and utterly satisfied with what I have accomplished. This has been more than a satirical creative exercise for me... This has been my therapy, my long, difficult crawl out of a hole I was stuck in for so many years out in to a day that I was always meant to seize. I was not expecting it. This, in all succulent perspectives makes the entire adventure all the more grand.
Looking back on all the places I’ve traveled to, remembering how I had planned on giving reviews on travel web sites and contributing to a corporate world of tips and know-how, I come now here to the end realizing that none of my Twelve Places had anything to do with travel at all. Each place, mundane or insane, was nothing more than a lure out of my rabbit hole, an opportunity to squash my hermitage and be pro-active. Through it all I’ve overcome some of my deepest anxieties and have finally re-entered the world of the living (certain friends are celebrating…). I’ve always blamed my depression on Minnesota because Minnesota is nothing but a thing, a thing that I unfortunately associate a lot of horrible memories to and have always needed to be saved from. I didn’t need to explore Minnesota to find its redeeming qualities. I needed to explore Minnesota because I had to save myself from the walls I had enclosed myself in. I had to utilize my life and turn it in to something good. I had to grow. Being stagnant, repressed and isolated is extremely unhealthy for the soul, no matter how safe it feels. I had to explore Minnesota to find out that I was a bigot against it, that I was not meant to be filled with hatred simply because I consequently lost myself to so much grief. I had to explore Minnesota because that hatred was killing my inner most spirit and I swear, Reader, what little flame I had left at the time almost vanquished in a puff of smoke. I came close to that edge.
I took away something from each place I visited. Most of the things I took away really had nothing to do with the destination itself but rather the company, or from the challenge of the environment. Or, to put it more plainly: from the simplicity of experiencing an experience. You can take and leave anything you want from your life and your stories. I highly recommend being greedy and taking as much as you are willing to pile into yourself because emptiness is unbearable and worthless. This, Reader, is what I took from my Twelve Places:
Pioneer Days gave me a sense of roots. I was with people I loved and who loved me, and I was able to be part of something traditional, annual, and reliably comforting.
Roseau gave me a road trip to help me grieve for my grandmother, for my old life of an old me, and gave me the opening sights to a brighter light.
From this trip I stripped an old, bitter piece of myself and replaced it with a hopeful light.
Mille Lacs put luminosity on friendship, and revived my free spirit and set it loose in an adventure I never could’ve possibly imagined experiencing. I took away a lot of memories and a sense of belonging in the oddest, most unexpected corner of the world.
The Apple River Valley was a true testament of my ability to bitch and hopefully achieve a sort of comedic avenue while doing so.
The Renaissance Festival gave light to a sort of rigidity within, but was damn proud of it besides.
The Minneapolis Auto Show taught me that dating can be horrible and a grave waste of time.
Merlin’s Rest taught me that dating can be a wonderful thing, and with the right person a well-chosen investment.
Toast Wine and Bar was something that brought more than one sense of my body back to life. I discovered that I was ungracefully insecure, but in the same turn learned that I was adamant about rising above it. And then there was the cheese… succulent, divine cheese; flavor of home, of comfort, and of class. I took a sense of fulfillment to my body, in all its gluttonous glory, from here. I also took a toothpick and a good buzz.
After the wine bar, of course, was the Acme Comedy Club. Now, this drew something out of me that I hadn’t dared to mention in the actual post I wrote… Stage theater and comedy have always been a private longing, a pipe dream, a part of my being that’s been clandestine since I was very little. I used to spend hours in front of my bedroom mirror as a child, practicing accents and playing the parts of personalities I absorbed from my surroundings. This has always been a withering aspiration as I seem to grow older and older without ever pursuing it, my potential losing potency all the while. Watching a woman, about my age, stand up on a stage and deliver a radiant performance of ridiculousness and oddball humor, I was inspired. I’m not saying I’m gearing up to put myself in front of a microphone any time soon, but it was the first time in over five years that I remembered, remembered fully, that performance and entertainment were part of who I am. This is something I need to pursue on some sort of level, I thought. I had been so dead of believing in myself and who I am for so damn long... I was now slowly coming back to life. Inspiration. That’s what I took.
Brit’s taught me that I’m more of a girl than I’d like to admit… How anti-feminist of me! But seeing on how it was yet another date, I was discovering a lot of ridiculous things about myself (such is the bitter part of making yourself vulnerable). I loved the pub, and I enjoyed the attempted surreal feeling of being in another country,
I was also coming to face a lot of my inadequacies. I’m not experienced in dating. I’ve had boyfriends of course, but dating in the orthodox sense is a whole new endeavor for me.
How do you impress a stranger?
And why the hell do I want to so badly!
I’ve never been a pursuer in all of my life, and here I am pursuing like a mad woman. I barely recognize myself as I slowly morph in to a new skin. It’s about time, too. I’ve been wearing the same skin for over five years. Time to shed. Rediscovery is what I took from this one.
Albert Lea was the road trip I needed to reignite my spirit fully. Fire came back in to my soul in flames I never thought would rise again. It was the beginning. It was the opening I needed to fly out of with a bang of sunlight and color and potential. There was nothing special about Alert Lea itself (other than seeing my dear friend, of course), but the journey was by far more crucial than the destination. I took fire.
Place number twelve: an art exhibit in the city.
Despite my rants, the hallways of creative people ignited a sense of belonging. Through the art I didn’t like I was inspired to improve my own devices. Through the art I loved I was humbled. The diversity comforted me. The culture reminded me that I’ve been deprived of it for far too long. And then, quite unexpectedly, I found exactly what I needed to find all the while. There’s no doubt I could’ve clicked my silver shoes and wished for home all along, but the magic wouldn’t have worked had I not taken the drive in to finding myself again. I needed to uncover exactly what I have to offer to the world, and a reason to set roots and establish a home.
I have found an apartment in the city and am moving forward in less than a month, reigniting a sense of myself because of it. I feel reckless, confident, steadfast and brave. Standing in front of that house, curiously enough, had a profound effect on my senses… and my soul. It was beautiful. It was awe-inspiring. It took my breath away. This was the picture perfect life I desperately wanted to attain. This was the right way to close my pursuit of happiness. It was fitting and fate worthy: I stood in front of a house, a home, in Minnesota, and wanted to make it my own.
I have finally fallen in love. And love is what I have profoundly taken from it all.
