intimations of migration

I was reflecting today, as I tidied the living room with my favorite candle burning (Balsam Fir by Yankee -- they don't make it anymore because it's pretty much like inhaling pine pitch, but I've always loved it and I've nursed this one slowly through about six winters) and the lights respirating among the branches of the Christmas tree, that one of the aspects of marginal employment which I enjoy is the ability to pick up and move without much entanglement or hassle.

I spent a lot of my childhood and adolescence yearning for stability, and once I sort of settled in South Bend I was completely unprepared for the painful waves of restlessness that swamped me every year -- the almost irresistable urge to pack up and go, go anywhere, go see someplace new, go take in the beauties of unfamiliar landscapes and write stories about unfamiliar people. Fighting against that urge, I think, contributed to the depression.

My destiny, or what-have-you, keeps tugging me somewhere else. Every time I've moved somewhere, hoping it was for good, God only ever told me, For now. Other, more typically successful people would probably tell me that getting a really good job allows you just as much freedom to transfer all over the place; I'm sure they're probably right, but I don't know it firsthand. I do know that marginal jobs are everywhere, and that working them, for the time being, seems fitting. I always have the promise of freedom, which matters far more to me than it used to. And I like moving. Moving into a new place is like unwrapping a great big present piece by piece, like putting together an intricate puzzle in infinite comfortable ways, like performing the marriage ceremony of function and beauty in a brand new chapel. (Once you sweat and swear your way through boxes until you've found things like clean underwear and your toothbrush.)

I felt it today -- that tidal surge of restlessness, the pull to somewhere I've never been. God hasn't told me yet that I'm leaving; but I know my time in Erie is relatively short. Every contingent plan I make keeps getting struck, and I don't know what the next step is, but I know it's coming. So while I'm here there's the labor of unifying the churches, and the earning of an adequate living, and writing, and getting my feet back under me, and studying (I have Lewis' The Four Loves next on my reading queue, and after that Kierkegaard's Works of Love, with Kristeva's Tales of Love woven throughout; she's pretty dense reading) -- plenty to do.

But still...the call is coming. And as I shelve the latest stray books at work, or plug in the lights on the Christmas tree in the trailer, or wake up to a bewhiskered furry black face rattling my skull with purrs, I grin with the anticipation of an updraft under my wings. The air is crackling with it. As I bend my head to my current given tasks, a building breeze ruffles the feathers on the back of my neck, whispering that it's almost time.