For eight months now, I’ve had three keys on my keychain: my car keys and two keys to my storage locker in the Bronx. Last week, I added a P.O. Box key and as of this very morning, I have a key to my apartment. “My” is a slight exaggeration. I have my own room, but I’m sharing the flat with two others, one of whom goes by the nickname “da saluki cutie.” Have I mentioned I feel old?
I’m ever so slightly unnerved at having a semi-permanent address again. And I don’t think it’s just because that base is in Illinois. Actually that reminds me of a game I played over the summer, called “states that would be worse to live in than Kansas.” It was my lame attempt at making my Cambridge, MA-raised friend feel better about moving to podunk Kansas for grad school.
Illinois really isn’t half bad. And I can live almost anyway for a field season (even Kansas!), but Illinois for maybe 18 months, even with a summer break?
A friend recently said in passing that my anxiety about staying in one place for very long reflected perhaps a fear of commitment. Now that’s something I’ve heard often enough, though never leveled at me. And I have to admit, I’m more than a little bothered that it might be true.
There is a certain … danger? opportunity? … in finding yourself growing attached enough to a place and its people that you might start searching out reasons to stay just a little longer. And if that were to happen, does that mean I am losing focus on my goals and what I hope to achieve in the crucial couple of years coming up?
Of course, all it takes is a black panther conversation to remind myself that yep, this is most definitely temporary. Even if the temporal aspect of life in one place stretches and constricts in unexpected, rarely anticipated and efficiently chaotic ways.
For the time being, I’ll nurse my fleetingly adopted root-bound potted plant, and play it by ear.
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