a question of geography

It might actually be the end of winter here. The only snow that remains is the huge gray piles on the curbs, and I spent yesterday in the backyard, cleaning up litter and wishing I had a rake. I have even heard rumors of crocuses--whispered to me by the snowdrops in the side yard.

This time of year makes me want to be on a campus, the sort of place where the first fifty-degree day finds people throwing open windows (and occasionally, throwing up out of windows) and wearing t-shirts a week early and trying to arrange a picnic on a patch of mud. This is not the only place where people celebrate spring, of course--there is also the first Saturday morning at the farmers market, and the gloveless runners in the evening, and ask Bob Hicok about the men who elope with daffodils--but a college campus tends to have a high concentration of this sort of behavior in the first days of spring.

I think of campuses, too, because I spent seven years on two campuses that were pretty good at this sort of thing. Actually, my undergraduate campus was great at this sort of thing. It was the kind of small state school that attracted wanna-be hippies and disc golfers and folks who read Kant while smoking cloves and sitting on concrete benches. Last fall I went back to that campus and immediately I smelled cloves, and it rocketed me back to my junior year of college, walking over to my evening writing class, most likely wearing some ridiculously oversized pseudo-hippie sweater, since that was my uniform back then.

Cloves are my madeleines, I suppose.

I could say a bunch of other trite things here about spring and renewal and fresh starts as well--so let's pretend that I just did--but really, this is the time of the year that I always start thinking about where the next year will find me. Right now, this week, it's hitting me pretty hard. There are a few reasons for this: I'm closing out the second year of my three-year contract, I spent the weekend in the city where I used to live, snowdrops, etc. Whatever the reason, I have woken up the past few days and thought: What's coming next?

In approximately one year, I'll have to decide where to go next. This is the sort of topic that comes up frequently in my head, to the extent that it's really more appropriate to refer to it as Where to Go Next. Sometimes the WTGN game is a fun one that I play, driving through yet another pseudo-snowstorm on the way to teach a ten o'clock class that will be half-full, or when I'm eating in a restaurant around town and see one family with a brood of mixed-race children that have been adopted and brought to this corner of the mitten to be saved by Jesus*.

Other times WTGN is something that sneaks up on me and gives my heart a quick squeeze in its fist--Hey! Having a good time? Don't get too comfortable! And sometimes, lately, it's a game that runs constantly and quietly in the background when I am doing the laundry and driving around town and working on poems and thinking about lesson plans. In other words, of late, the WTGN game has been a constant lurking presence. Even when I think I've turned it off, it's still there.

WTGN, as it turns out, would make an excellent OS.

The other thing about the WTGN game is that it pits the two halves of my brain against each other. The business-writing side, the one that likes to copy edit and spend long periods of time considering the organizational hierarchy of the fridge, wants to make an Excel spreadsheet and devise various categories--things like Proximity to City of 500,000+, Distance to Major Airport Hub, Miles From Family, Time Zone, Approximate Career Satisfaction Rating, Average Length of Winter--and plot various cities or areas of the country, then cross-references those cities against city demographics. And sure, while I'm at it, let's just toss in the rankings from Richard Florida, and research tour stops from a couple of really, really great bands, and see what the average ticket out of this city might cost.

The other side of my brain says, Wow, this is hard. You should probably eat a big wedge of Gouda and then lie down for a bit. I'm sure one day soon you'll have this really profound, transcendental moment in which the answer will come to you. Most likely on the wind, or in the way a strange dog wags its tail.

Fuck my brain.

I know the answer lies someplace in the middle, that demilitarized zone that occasionally produces a coherent thought. I know that too many factors are Xs right now--will there be a job offer? will it be a job that promises to be really, really rewarding? how comfortable am I exchanging that sort of fulfillment for geographic uncertainty? what sort of money will I have? because a decent salary can pay for a fair number of tickets out of a place--and that too many Xs, however disconcerting to me in the short term, mean that I can't make any major decision. And what happens to plans made too early, anyway? They get upset. Things happen. Shit happens. Sometimes even good shit.

Sometimes you are hanging out in the apartment, having another mild panic attack and wondering if you should renew your lease, and then the phone rings and a grad program is offering you a bunch of money if you come to Minnesota. Or you are walking out of a job you don't like and the phone rings and someone on the other end wants to give you a job. Sometimes you are in Atlanta, wandering around a garden with your brother, and someone calls to say that they would like to publish your book, if that is okay with you. There is no way that it makes any sense for me to spend the four days of spring break I have left wondering if some university I've never heard of yet will have an opening a year from now**. That is the definition of crazy.

And yet. Have we met.

This is a letter to myself, really, and here's what I need to tell myself. I will probably be here one more year. I will have classes to teach for the next two semesters and one summer session. If my friends here leave, I will make new friends. One day I will probably leave here too. Then I will find someplace new to live. I will miss the friends who don't live in the same town or state. I will make friends who live in the same town or state. If I live in that place for a long time, I will probably shift all this crazy to worrying whether or not that is the "right" place to live for a long time. I will debate the meaning of the words community and home as I do the laundry and drive around town and write poems. And when spring comes around, and the windows are open, my thoughts will turn to the places I've lived, or want to live, and I will go to the store and buy myself some Gouda and maybe some tulips and try to be happy where I am, for however long I happen to be in it.

It is all I can do.


*this is a gross overstatement about western Michigan. It is also often resoundingly true.
**and this is considering teaching positions. Don't even open the jar labeled Maybe I Should Go Back to CC and Study Graphic Design. That bottle is for emergencies only.