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mom: i may not be sentimental. but i travel light.

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It's summer again. I'm leaving Flagstaff pretty much the same way I came, with an appalling amount of junk in my car and in need of a haircut.

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It's that time again, the leaving time, the assessing time. Why this place? Why, ultimately, not this place? Which direction now?

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Sometimes I could go for a different kind of mindset, one that plans things out more concretely. I want to answer that question like this: I'm going here because it's good for my career, or because it's close to family, because it has clean water, or good-looking men, or a relatively low concentration of sex offenders.

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But it never happens that way. I ask, Where to? and the rest of me says, Eh, how about a good time in a bad neighborhood? Life without a bluegrass bar is ultimately not worth living. Where is the highest concentration of peach stands in the United States? I must be near a river or I'll disappear. Then it gets distracted, probably by something shiny.

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This is unhelpful, especially if you're not really sure exactly what a bluegrass bar is. Life right now is a little like swimming in the ocean at night, everything above me briefly illuminated when the moon comes out, then just as quickly plunged back into darkness. There's something scary about it, but also something seductive, close, comforting. I can't see my way, but the sea will always support my body. I can't breathe, but the air inside me will eventually draw me up.

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I don't know where it is, but I know the way it's going to feel. My insides know that, and relax. If only my GPS was the same way.