Tails California (11/2)

Many years ago, I made a mix CD for my brother, for when he was driving across country.  I found the perfect song, "Heads Carolina/Tails California" to describe his journey, because he purposely seeks to live near the ocean, the mountains, and has had the freedom to move from coast to coast.   Now, whenever I listen to it, it makes me cry, in a swelling, tight, pain-in-the-chest kind of way. 

  

Heads, Carolina Tails, California.
Somewhere greener, somewhere warmer.
Up in the mountains, down by the ocean.
Where? It don't matter, as long as we're goin'
Somewhere together. I've got a quarter.
Heads, Carolina Tails, California.

 I sing it at the top of my lungs until my heart hurts and my voice breaks.

 

This song makes me think of so many things: my brother moving, me moving, our tiny little family staying put in their tiny little town and all my assorted guilt about that...my husband and I, before we were married, all our world in a moving van, going to an apartment I'd never seen before. 

This wanderlust burning, aching below a need for stability, yearning to move, see, travel, live.  A heaping dose of jealousy.  A sense of being "willingly trapped" like the fox in the Little Prince.  Unwitting enmeshment in an impending sense of family obligation.  Conflict, ambivalence, confusion, uncertainty, responsibility, indecision, burden.

Stability is safety, expectations, roles, the known.  Wandering is living.  Hope.  Freedom.

Logan Airport, at 4 am.

Last week, we packed up our suitcases and set off for Sacramento and the American Art Therapy Association Conference.  I kept thinking "what the hell am I doing?"  

I didn't expect the trip to change the world, I was just hoping for some perspective, some time away.   I was desperately burned out, but still spent AN ENTIRE WEEKEND doing paperwork for work so that I could leave and still have a job when I got back.  Things have to change.  But I felt guilty the whole time and wishing that I could take back my vacation.  This is how skewed my thinking was.

The convention center.

Us.

I meant to post these during my vacation, but we had terrible internet service.  And a little perspective is good.   So these next several posts are after the fact.  More for me, but having this as a place to put it all together feels very containing.

The Capital Building.

And so, Sacramento?  We flew in on an eerily quiet election day (absentee ballots in the mail), and checked into a hotel right down the street from the capital building, office of Arnold Schwarzenegger.  

Orange trees and palm trees sat along side of fall foliage, flat land.  

We wandered around the city and got trailed by a security guard after climbing up on a parking garage to take photos of a church with 5 crosses.  Delusional jet leg, our bodies protesting the existence of the sun.  Observations of poverty, homelessness, recession and mental illness. 

Trying to understand where we are.  Even as wanderers, already setting down roots and trying on a new city.  A chance to find clarity in our identities, a different direction to our journey.