Letters to Old Friends

Dear Friends-
Thanks for letting me visit. All of you, it's been great. As Cox said, old friends are way more fun than new friends. Not to belittle new friends, since I'm driving westward again and hoping to make some rather quickly, or it's going to be a lonely winter. No, new friends are fun, but there is something about the ease of old friendships that is just good for the soul. You don't even need to make new jokes, you can laugh at the old ones. So easy. And so good. Especially if your old friends are as funny as mine. Really, I laugh hardest with you guys, and I love that.

It's been fun to peak in on everybody's new lives, snooping around your apartments, sleeping on your couches, meeting your new friends. Lawyer clothes, brooklyn apartments, doctorate degrees, salaried jobs, and expecting engagements? Oh my. Our lives have diverged in so many ways since our friendships were rooted in their native physical spaces- it's fascinating. Who would have ever thought that'd we'd be the people we are today, where we are today? And that I'd still show up to visit, all these years later? Are we still growing up? growing away? growing apart in space and time perhaps, but still, with a friendship that transcends all that? Plenty of friends have fallen by the wayside, obviously, casualties of forward progress, but I love that ours have somehow hung on. Tended to by phone calls and emails, or just hibernating somewhere deep underground like those old photo albums in a box in the basement, ready to resurrect when the lazarus moment arrives, hardly any rust to speak of.

I'm sorry to be so sentimental. It's just me, in my head, these last 3,000 miles back to the desert, and I miss you all already. I love that I just really like who you've all grown up into since we parted ways, it's inspiring. If you would all just decide to move together somewhere, then I could finally stop wandering and settle down there forever. It'd be great, it wouldn't even matter where, I mean, I might even move to Kansas for you guys. I know there would be a good ultimate team, once we got there.

Except then I'd have no one to visit. And that would be sad too. Visits are fun. Especially to Las Vegas this winter. You know you want to come. You can visit my real life, meet my plants and the mountains, and there's room for two in my tent!

So thanks again, everyone, for opening your lives and your cities and your new friends and your couches to me this month. It was so good for my soul. Here's a sad story- I was really lonely this summer, working in near silence on the tussock tundra, and it was unsettling to feel that way- new, unfamiliar feelings I struggled to name. I just wanted to give up and go home, I guess. And then I realised that I was longing for "home," a place I don't really have anymore, since my friends seem to have wind dispersed these recent years. But I'm not brave enough to build a new home just yet, not ready to be rooted. But this month, I burned through too many fossil fuels to call myself an environmentalist anymore, and did a lot of visiting. A record amount of visiting. And I realised that home isn't a place, it's people, and I still have all of those people, all over the place. And that's pretty good. A sad story with a happy ending. (See jill, I can name lots of feelings)

Saudades,

Kate