Chris Brown Photography, elephant 7.09

What I’ll miss about this mountain town is too much to list.  I like walking down to my favorite cafe and shopowners call out a greeting.  I like stopping for a chat.  I’ll miss the used booksellers; the overpriced athleticwear store, though they now use a conservative woman’s name to advertise their bras, so I won’t miss it too much, only the people working there; the Indian man who always says hello though I don’t go to his store; the cleaning goods proprietor who waves.  Sometimes I’ll run into a friend, or an old student.

I’ll miss the gourmet cafe, the gourmet pizzeria, and the gourmet restaurant I have yet to try. I will miss the Yoga Workshop.  I will miss the used furniture store.  I’ll miss ordering a pizza from the good pizza place. I’ll miss seeing the sign of our state representative over another sign advertising a dispensary.  I’ll miss the fresh-baked cookies in the my second favorite cafe, the Long Island guys who make sandwiches at the store around the corner.  So much consumerism, so much heart.

I’ll miss the Boulder Farmer’s Market, Red Wagon, Hazel Dell, Sanctuary Chai; Brillig’s Bakery; the Smoothie Guy & Co.; the Sisters Pantry; Udi’s, the Flower women,the Plants Women, and various friends who are ready with a smile or a hug or both.

I miss my friends.  I have already left, as I take up this post again.  I am on the Western Coast, soon to head East.  Despite cleaning the refrigerator, I left two lonely cornmeal pizza crusts in the freezer, as well as my airplane snack food.  At the last moment, a one year-old bottle of green kombucha effervesced, spilling and shooting itself on the ceiling, the walls, the floors.  I ran to my neighbor who ran in with a mop.

How are the flowers I left behind?  Has the beautiful fat jasmine bloomed?  Can I leave off the self-pity?

I forgot to bring the champagne I meant to transport in the car, but I have the coffee beans.  I leave a foodie town, ripe with organics and vitality. I am in transit, in a land of sun.

wine, pizza, sea

sunset

Texas Library & Archives

In a fortnight, or a paksha (Sanskrit for half a lunar month Wikipedia tells me), the movers arrive.  I have packed twenty-four boxes so far; fourteen of them are full of books. Sorting, shredding, bubblewrapping and taping it all up, I feel like a turtle whose home is far bigger than its body might need.  At one point I found a torn back cover of a paperback on the floor.  J.R.R. Tolkien smiled up at me, and I thought of hobbit holes.

Of course, when Bilbo Baggins went on an adventure, he threw a birthday party and ostentatiously disappeared.  How cozy were those hobbit holes and elven treehouses, perfect for taking tea and reading, or in the latter, gazing at the stars.

After much debate, I’ll take a table, an overstuffed chair, and a lamp.  I wish that were all, because on the page, it is so perfectly adequate.  But there’s the bed, the bookshelves, a desk, and another lamp.  Plus forty-four boxes.

Rivendell by Tolkien