a month and a day, November 2007
Id driven up to Seattle for an uncle’s wedding in June, I’d flown to NY once in August and once again in September. I’ve no vacation time left and I can’t afford to miss work, much less buy a plane ticket to NY for the holidays. So I’m faced with not just Thanksgiving away from home, a regular enough occurrence, but with Christmas away from home as well. I make it up to Bellingham with Alicia and its plenty fun enough, even getting away to take some great photos. And I’m reminded of a time as a little kid how I saw one of the “Best Places to Live” shows on TV, back before the internet made it all on-demand, and how Bellingham topped the list and how it always stuck with me. Years before I even left for Tampa, itself 4 years ago, I’d had Bellingham on my mind.
At that town is alright, quite alright. Its strange to me how fixed I was a kid on Bellingham, almost assuredly missing all the reasons why such-and-such a place might be better than another. But new to me was the idea that places are things whose values are not all equal, the idea that places are more than names, more than locations, more than weather and a particular volume of people, that in fact places can give one meaning, and radically alter one’s direction in life. So over Thanksgiving, exploring Bellingham appropriately enough and for just a few days, I came full circle and found myself missing Portland. It wasn’t the people, or the weather, or the idea of Portland at all, it was a simply longing for a place to make mine and in 5 short months, I was well on my way.
But I was really sad to not be headed home, back to NY.
