where we go from here

Two semesters of school swallowed me up. Only 4 classes, and they weren't even that hard. I think this is why they leave college to the young and childless.

I came up for air twice... once around Thanksgiving and once briefly during spring break (not really a break). Some days going to classes felt like a relief from all the overthinking that goes into my painting (and my parenting, too, for that matter), and other days it felt like a yawning drag to sit still for two hours at a stretch and take notes and write essays in bluebooks. I enjoyed it for the most part, though, and got along famously with my professors. Probably because I am closer in age to them than to my fellow students. 

I don't know how to tally up yet another random year in the patchwork medley that is my higher education; but while the outcome of getting an art degree remains somewhat undefined, there are two things I know I got from taking classes this year:

1. permission to make mistakes

2. I'm so glad I'm not 19

Both invaluably valuable, those.

So, things got intensely local for a while there... there was energy in the hive and for the hive, but anything outside of a 10 mile radius, I did not know about or have the time to find out. Or that could just be what happens when you live in Rhode Island. 

But here's a kid with some long-term vision, or, as he puts it, "I'm a distance-seer."

And when distance calls, you get dressed...

And you learn to speak the language...

And then you take apart the furniture...

... and put everything in boxes and get ready to go.

So, yes, distance...

Japan!

How could we say no?

Even as hard as it is to pull up our nascent roots here, to maintain the momentum that gathers no moss, it is also unspeakably good to imagine navigating again the enchanted city of Kyoto, whose moss is composed, cultured, cultivated. We shall borrow hers, then.

Countdown to leave Providence has begun, and we have a lovely summer in Michigan ahead before we go abroad, so of course I am a jumble of sadness and nerves and utter giddy delight. How can it be true, this life?

It's less like stacking cards -- carefully, one on top of the last -- and more like flinging the deck and jumping on whatever lands face up. We keep moving: I keep making amazing friends and I keep taking classes and I figure that it amounts to something, somehow, but how do I hold it all? How do I assemble it and make it useful? Maybe it's less important where we go, and more important how we go from here.

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