California Stars

Homesick all weekend. I've sat here for almost an hour now, trying to write about that, but the words won't come. I've felt in limbo since I got here, and such a non-place seems to defy description. Things aren't bad here at all--I love my job, my students, the many friends I was too far from for years. But now there are people (and dogs) on the other side of the country, and I can't really think about that distance too deeply, because I need to be able to function.
 
And there's the place itself, that other side. Maybe we only ever really find our place in the place where we find ourselves, whenever and however that happens. Maybe it would have happened here if I'd stayed. But I left before something in me was fully formed, and something about California helped me grow, expand, free myself.

All of this has been spinning around in my head. And then I heard this song tonight while I was driving, and suddenly I was on a cliff along Route 1, a damp, freezing wind blowing in hard from the Pacific, the scent of the ocean mixing with eucalyptus and coastal sage. And off to my left in the darkness there's a halo of light hovering over San Francisco, but it's nowhere near close enough to interfere with the millions and millions of stars in the perfect night sky.