I fell asleep on the bus ride up, because I was exhausted after more than a week of long days, scheduled down to the minute, packing in the to-do's, and then smiling like a fiend at strangers on a expo floor, flirting and tittering when I'd rather have rolled my eyes and walked away. Exhausted.
When I opened my eyes, they were there - the foothills of the great Rocky Mountains, nose to nose with the gathering storm, like an old and powerful friend who is gracious, and wise, and welcoming, and doesn't take shit from anybody.
Well, hello there, you handsome stony-faced hunk.
"...like an old and powerful friend who is gracious, and wise, and welcoming, and doesn't take shit from anybody."
After five years away, I'm back in Boulder. For the past waking nine hours, the memories have been floating to the surface, not like Hokusai's crashing wave, roughly represented under the bridge in Boulder Park, ferocious and sudden and all-consuming. Rather, it's like I've waded into Boulder Creek's ostensibly crystal clear water, but then little realizations break, one at a time – the temperature is colder than anticipated, the bubbles and leaves and blossoms flash and flit, a rogue fishlet, and then the crash of an exuberant puppy – surfacing not all at once, but ceaselessly pulling consciousness.
Home is where the hearts of many are.
I walked Pearl Street and then sat, and realized I had unknowingly found my way back to one of my favorite haunts, the Boulder Bookstore. Rooms upon rooms of other worlds and times and people, new books and used books shelved side-by-side in beckoning rows. Starving, I realized my budget is more flexible than it was when I lived here. I went straight to The Kitchen – the place I only ate when some visiting relative was treating - and sat at the bar.
In addition to (modest, but adequate) liquidity, the past five years have brought me a confidence I didn't realize I had until I stood in this place and somehow felt different than I had years ago. It's hard to put my finger on it. But this city, which was my escape hatch when I didn't know where or when or how or why I was headed, was the free-spirit nest I needed it to be. Living here didn't exactly show me (in one fell swoop) what I was destined for, but it did show me how to be okay with the not-knowing, how to embrace the non-direction, how to make every path, no matter how long traveled, into one of worth and insight and learning.
And once you can be okay with not knowing who you are or what you're meant to do, well, you can be okay with anything. The possibilities re-open, not in a flighty and wishful sense, but rather in the sense that self-validation isn't reserved for the newspaper heroes and philanthropists and billionaires, but belongs to anyone who can see the world with open eyes.
"Sweet Vermouth on the rocks, with a twist," always gets their attention.
Anyway, I rolled in town much like I did all those years ago – with a half-baked arrival plan, and not much else. So I bellied up to the bar and smiled at the bartender (which I never would have done 5 years ago) and ordered a glass of wine and opened the Times which sat on the counter. I got an appetizer AND a main dish (also something I never would have done 5 years ago) and forwent dessert for a sweet vermouth on the rocks (with a twist) (yet another thing I never would have done 5 years ago). He gave me the vermouth for free, after explaining it's a limited-edition run of Del Professore, and that it has too much coriander and cocoa taste in it to work in cocktails so it kind of sits there, unused and unloved and laughing at his inability to mix it adequately with anything else. I winked at him. (Yes. You guessed it. Something else I never would have done 5 years ago.)
This place hasn't changed much that I can see, and this morning in deference to that, I found myself a bike to rent and came into town to find a coffee shop (alas, Saxy's is closed) to sit with my computer open and type with the Apple-set that lurks in EVERY coffee shop here, while drinking a caffeine-charged mocha, without a single plan for what's coming later today.
It's good to be "home" where home once was.