Colorado: The sky is bluer and a hell of a lot bigger, the grass is browner, and the world sprawls out to the horizons. Downtown Denver is a mess of skyscrapers in a small area, dwarfed by the plains around it, one eye always fixed to the west, where the front range explodes from the horizon like God just got bored one day and poked the earth to see what would happen.
There are few things are stunning as the way the mountains look from the plane window when you land at Denver International Airport, which I did yesterday afternoon at about 4:34pm local time, after a three hour flight from Detroit, MI. I found myself there for an hour and forty five minutes, and while there, enjoyed a ham and swiss sandwich (with 67% of my daily sodium intake!) and a tall mocha frappuccino (no whip) from Starbucks and an incredible conversation with a friendly business consultant named Greg, who volunteered to be my first client when I start my dance therapy business for corporate execs. Unfortunately I didn't see him following that, so the ball is in his court to get in touch with me (he has my business card) but I am quite hoping he does. I live for those chance encounters -- conversations here and there, people you meet when all you wanted was an outlet to charge your computer. In any case, I was so distracted I nearly forgot to board the plane, but thankfully Greg was paying attention and he boarded before me, so I was actually on the flight when it touched down in Denver.
My parents do not live in the house I grew up in anymore; they live in a one bedroom apartment in Belmar, a cute, trendy, and struggling neighborhood in the suburbs of Denver. I had not seen the apartment before. Along the way home, we drove past the house we lived in when I was three -- I didn't remember it -- just to see how it looks now (very nice). And then we got to this new place. I looked around, and asked, why is all this stuff that used to belong to us doing in this strange apartment?
Disorienting. This is not the place I grew up in. This is not home, it's where my parents live. It doesn't belong to me anymore. I left, and life moved on.
This morning we spent some time running errands in the town I grew up in, Evergreen. There are some new buildings. Some shops have moved. But nothing has changed; time must stand still there, stuck. But that's exactly why I, and my parents, left -- because the people who live in Evergreen are kind and good people, but they don't want change. They want to know that the same stores will still be there in the morning, the same people, and the same way of life. It just exists, and that's why I can't live there.
I can't deny it was nice if only because I recognized it; something familiar in the craziness of figuring out this new life my parents have. But after I left, I don't remember feeling any regret. I saw a couple guys I used to know in high school in the parking lot of Wal-Mart. I slunk past and hoped they wouldn't notice me (they didn't -- they wouldn't. I am firmly convinced that there are very few people from that high school who would recognize me -- or care enough to say hello -- if I passed them on the street.)
It is now about a week until I leave the country, and I think I've stopped trying to deal with that fact. In a few days I'll put up the introductory post to the France section of the blog, because the format of things will change a bit and all that. But in the mean time, I said I would save my judgment of Asheville until I left, and although I'm sure it will change ---
Asheville, North Carolina is beautiful. I wish I could have seen the surrounding areas, but nestled among the hazy, blue mountains, it seems to be a product of the landscape instead of the master of it. There is a certain charm to it -- liberal, progressive -- and yet still remarkably 'southern.'
And I still don't think I could live there -- it's too small, too slow-paced, and too hippie for me. At the risk of sounding incredibly pompous, and that's not my intention -- I just prefer the more sophisticated -- that's not even the right word, but I think you know what I mean -- lifestyle. I love my tall buildings and busy streets in the middle of the night, the way the skyscrapers become their own stars. I'm sure I'm generalizing terribly, but it seemed to me that the ideal southern lifestyle involves calmly waiting for life to pass by and drinking beer. I am not good at waiting for things to happen, and I just don't think I could ever live that slowly.
But that's not what made this summer one of the best I've ever had -- nor was it the jobs I had, for those were basic, entry level jobs that I managed to have a lot of fun with because of my attitude -- no, the heart of the summer was the people. I met so many interesting people, people with and without dreams. I knew it before, but learned with shocking detail the incredible capacity of human beings to be impossibly nasty and impossibly kind at exactly the same time. I saw black and white all mixed up and was impressed upon every day that no one is ever all good or all bad, but both, and that both reside somehow peaceably in one body. I met cynical, angry people; happy people; people waiting for the world to turn; people waiting for permission to be happy again. I had dozens of wonderful conversations. Somewhat significantly, I fell in love for the first time. And when I left, I left a bit of myself behind, with everyone who smiled at me, hugged me, wished me luck, asked me to send postcards, asked to know what I was up to, where I'm going, and to remember them when I got there.
If you're reading, I can assure: I will remember you.
And so, I'm sure I'll be back in Asheville, not because I want to live in the city, but because I want to see you again. Maybe next summer, maybe not, but sometime, I'm sure my steps will find my way there, if only for a week or two, to give you a hug and tell you where I've been, and if you want to, let you live vicariously through my life -- which if I'm right, will be the sort of life you'd like to live vicariously through.
In any case -- there you have it. I had a great summer, and it hurt a bit to leave. That's the simplest way I can think of to put it, and so I'll just leave it that way.
Until next time -- and France is on the way.
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