Place

I was realizing today that we have been living in Yakima for close to five years. I know that doesn't sound like much, but it is the longest I have lived anywhere for the entirety of my adult life (which I count from 19 on, since that was the year I started paying my own bills).

After a two year stint in Cheney, which is basically Spokane valley with slightly less, younger people, it was off to Davis, California, which I hated with the heat of a million suns for almost the entire three years we lived there. Then we moved back to Mike's parents' basement for 9 months, followed by another 9 months in income based housing in (yet again) Cheney, then off to Yakima. That's five addresses in the first five years of marriage. I really don't want to ever do that again. But, here we are, into our next 'planning' phase (I bunny eared that to signify planning to mean either starry eyed BS or serious mature goal setting, however you wanna look at it--- I myself vacillate), which means another bout of moving is upon us. Only this time we don't have the excuse of school or a job transfer. I just don't want to spend another five years here if I have a choice. Which is a funny concept. Remember when as a kid, the retort whenever someone told you to knock something off was the ever witty: "it's a free country dude! Lay off!" Yeah. Well, kids, when you actually grow up and start tying yourself down by Owning Things, that concept of freedom gets a bit iffy.

Anyway, this is all a long way of saying that I'm homesick for my next Real home, while suffering through real bouts of attachment for both past and present versions of that home. Today, as I was taking my run through the neighborhood of good old Franklin park, I realized that I really do consider this my home, which immediately sent my mind to images of downtown Vegas (not really sure, except that the sun was shining straight in my eyes just the way it would on my summertime trips down to see grandma, and also maybe because Yakima is basically a northern version of a Vegas dessert ghetto, except with seasonal snow and a surprising lack of squirrels), which, also, in a way I consider a sister home, as it was my mom's home.

This might also be a result of (once again) believing everything I read the first time I read it. This time? Gary Snyder got me. Shoot me, but people who can convey their thoughts through writing? I'm a sucker for that kind of special skill. I think mostly cause I'm jealous. Anyway, this Snyder guy makes a big deal about our sense of place and responsibility towards our communities, which made me think (dammit), but I think I've come to a relative agreement between my wanderlust and my craving for Place and that is that I really do consider the northwest my home Place. Right now, I'm very much attached to the desert portion of that particular locale (for those of you ignorant of the northwest geography, that of Washington state in particular, we go from coastline, rain forest, mountains, and back down to arid desert-- all in one day's car trip without breaking a sweat), but I'm feeling the pull of the south deep right now. Which is to say, Oregon. Yes, oregon is South.

In other news, did anyone else know that pussy willows are a native species of the shrub steppe region? That's me baby! Pussy willows for everybody!