packing up.

Melancholy. I have felt melancholy all day long. Is it the packing of boxes? The wrapping up of things? Reflection and the conflicting feeling of not wanting to leave have propelled me into this state. I go about my daily routines, drive down the road, park the car, get out and go on my four mile run past Meyers farm and back, then head down to the town of Chatham to Our Daily Bread to have my morning granola. The ladies who work there know what I am going to order when I come in and for the first time in my life I am a regular somewhere. I have always been on the other side. I was the one who knew what the regulars were going to have.

I switched my life up a year ago. Quit my restaurant job, packed my Jetta with my ceramic tools and headed east. I wanted to be just an Artist. I wanted to feel away. I wanted to feel summer. I wanted to feel new. I arrived on the east coast and was immersed in the unknown. Everything, everyone, everywhere was new and different to me. It has been a transformative time.

I am going to miss the hoot owl at night, the crickets, the peepers, the flies or I like to think one fly that fallows me everywhere. The cats and the dogs, the smell of rain, the winding roads, the white steeples, the red barns, the birches, maples and oaks, the swaths of color that blanket the field outside the studio door, my friends M.C. and Bill, the quiet, leaving my keys in the ignition, knowing everyone in town, the song of the coyotes, the thunderstorms, picking fruit and making jam with M.C., skinny dipping in ponds, foxes, the roadside vegetable stands that are everywhere, cider donuts, and I really don't like donuts that much, the gentle hills, the forthrightness of the the easterners, fields of chicory and queen anne's lace, the seasons, the tag sales, and the dancing. I am going to miss all of it.