she moves she

It has been three weeks since I loaded all my belongings into a trailer and headed south to Alabama.  I’m living in a little cottage in a town called Mount Olive, which is fifteen minutes north of Birmingham.  It’s strange to find myself back in a place so familiar after living in Chicago for four years.  I grew up in Mount Olive (population 3,000).  I’m literally driving down roads that lead to my elementary school, high school, the house I grew up in.  In a sense I’m closer to the Past than I have ever been, which blurs the lines of identity and time.  Exactly where do the past and present meet?  And how does the Me From the Present adjust to the surroundings of the Present-Past?  It’s the Me of Today meeting the Me of Years Gone By.  Neither can be ignored and neither can exist on its own.  I suppose nature will take its course and out of this blurriness will evolve a newness that can only result from two entities accepting one another.

Only as you age can the Past become a word deserving of a capital letter.  I have only now realized that.  Up until now I do not think I had a Past.  Bringing a different Me home to my roots feels like it caused a rift in my space-time continuum.  Driving into the city during week one, I said out loud with the utmost sincerity, and concern for my mental well-being, “When am I?”  For a brief moment I felt all at once that I was on my way to class or rehearsal at UAB, that I was home from Chicago visiting for the holidays, and headed to meet a friend for lunch after moving back home.  Three very different stages of my life.  I suppose when you attach a setting to a point in time, there will be confusion when you go back to that setting.  Or when you have a strong emotional attachment to a time or place then you attach identifiers to them.  For example, Fall in Chicago always reminded me of beginnings because it was Fall when I moved there and certain temperatures mean love and electricity because I fell in love one January.

So now, the timid scent of Alabama and all the rolling hills are becoming something other than the Past.  It is now the Now.  I’m loving it more than I thought I would.  I’ve been eating lots of milk and cookies.  I’ve been reading lots of books.  I’ve adopted the rouge, neighborhood cat and named her “Detective.”  I’ve reconnected with familiar faces.  I’ve watched all of Planet Earth and have moved on to The Blue Planet.  I’ve painted my front door.  I’ve bought new shoes.  It’s a new life but an old life.  It’s wacky-colored, unusual, refreshing.  It’s a new, wild perspective.  It’s a Picasso.