PithyFish

i know i technically decided on a life plan just yesterday but i can’t stop making new ones.

i’m completely addicted to it.

i am a total hound on craigslist. i sniff out all the little details of jobs ads, critique them. i don’t bother with rental ads that don’t have pictures (honestly, who puts up an ad for an apartment without pictures?) or that have pictures of the corner of the bathroom floor, the plastic houseplant, or the berber carpet. i’ve learned all the ins and outs of searching for jobs, apartments, university masters programs around the world, flights, cost of living measurements, and quality of life comparisons. i know where the co-ops are.

i can’t stop thinking about the vegetables i want to plant in my midtown garden this coming winter. or the things i’m going to bake once i get my hands on an oven. or the people who may or may not recognize me when i walk into old soul again, or any of my old haunts. i can’t stop craving a bacon peach sandwich from fat face or a new pair of wood and leather huaraches from bows and arrows. or just a god damn log of goat cheese!

i can’t stop obsessing over this image of myself sitting on a fountain ledge in san francisco eating an apple or a sandwich feeling like a million bucks knowing that i am now a resident of my favorite city.

and then i look at pictures from my friends’ travels and i’m instantly comparing flight costs from san francisco to nicaragua, from canada to peru, from peru to brazil, from nicaragua to italy. i’m living from a backpack. i’m eating lots of carbs and wearing the same old clothes in repeat and sweating and laughing and drinking and learning to live on less sleep. there’s a gargantuan bowl of classic pasta bolognese twirling in the sky and it’s raining freshly grated parmesan.

now i’m in amador drinking a barbera with a plate of lasagna and olives.

my mom is visiting the rest of my family in california right now and i can’t help but think of montana and picture myself with a big old clunky truck driving with a green travel mug full of black, hot coffee in hand on my way to interview some farmer for an article i’ll be writing for the local chronicle. in the image i have really long hair with a few grays. for whatever reason, i’m wearing the same big, red winter coat i remember my mom wearing when i was a kid. it’s kinda worn from the wear, but it’s stuffed to the brim with goose down and i’m all cozy cowgirl about it. i work weekends at my mom’s yarn shop downtown. i spend vacations in yellowstone in a trailer. i ride horses and shit.

but then i’m in davis, california in the springtime pulling lemons from the tree in my backyard and running my fingers along the spines of lavender to loosen the foliage into a glass bowl for potpourri, the way my dad did once when i was young. there’s a cutting board messed with sliced tomatoes and the kitchen smells of fresh basil.

i’m in chicago. i work in publishing.

i’m in boston. still in publishing.

i’m in new york. still in publishing but not for long before i quit and move to portugal where i live on a farm where they make their own cheese and port and i plant things, run to the market, and learn the trade in exchange for room and board. i meet an italian who introduces me to her whole family and feeds me things.

party in berlin for a bit.

visit arielle in switzerland. eat loads of chocolate.

learn to fry chicken from a southerner. decide it’s better to bbq and drive through texas before heading to bali. or was it bolivia? bangkok? no, it was morocco.

and at the end of it all i’m a professor. of god-knows-what. i’m very unconventional and loosey goosey and creative by then. i wear a lot of baggy linens.

i know i should draw this all up into a tightly knit conclusion, reprimanding myself for not being in the now and here, but a part of me thinks that a part of the now and here is inevitably always made up of the then and later. i’m really enjoying my life in the now and here and i think that’s partly why i’ve been so full of dreams and ideas lately. now is a crossroads. now is exciting. now is lots of possibilities that i have to choose from. now is hunger. and i’m planning a harvest. i just can’t decide what to pick first.