Little Lady

So I watched the movie “Three men and a little lady” last night… It was exactly what I needed. No, I am not feeling particularly fatherly at this point in my life, nor am I wishing for more of a domestic existence. It just made me feel, good, for a reason that I can not explain.

—————-

I am starting to process the last few years of my life in South Florida. Reminiscing on what has happened here comes with both relative ease and difficulty.

The easy moments to recall are the ones with the Spangler family and all of the fun that we have had together. Watching them grow over the last few years has been one of the greatest pleasures and honors in my life. Not being able to escape to their crazy and creative house makes me want to cry. Not being able to attend their birthday parties, events, and school plays will destroy me. They are what I will truly miss.

I have left moments of my life and cities that I have lived in on numerous occasions and I can’t help but compare everything to the last impressions of leaving Chicago… and now, Sweden… Leaving Chicago is now somewhat of a blur to me, and I am sure that my friends living there could tell you a lot more about the finer points of this sequence of events. I remember a moving truck, I remember an empty apartment and I remember feeling both ripped off and relieved. The bottom line is that I loved living in Chicago. Being a Chicagin was something that I took great pride in. It was “my town”, something that I could latch onto and something that a white, middle-class boy with no cultural heritage could be a part of. It was exciting.

Living in the “Groundhog Day” existence that is South Florida life, I began to look at time and seasons in a different and I think non-healthy way. I know that certain things happened to me while I lived here, but I can not tell you when they happened or what year. It felt like my life had become a series of vignettes… Life is, in a lot of ways about connections and it is hard to have connections when you are living the same day over and over again.

In Sweden I found something that was dormant inside of my soul. The person that was so close to settling on something easy… Died… I re-found the strength to think outside the box in the larger scale of my life and to fight with everything I am, for what I want to become. I have seen the world from the eyes of a child again. I have seen vivid colors again. I have spontaneously laughed out loud for no good reason while sitting by myself again. I have seen things that I do not understand (yet) and I feel afraid and excited about it.

It’s not like I hate South Florida, although I have said that I have in the past, and it’s not like I want it to fall into the ocean, although I have said that I wanted it to… It’s the simple matter of home. This is not my home. I have felt like an alien, a shell of myself the last two years, and truthfully, I am grateful to South Florida for teaching me this simple and obvious lesson. I am not saying that KC is for sure the answer to any of these “home” issues floating around in my head, but it is sure worth a try.

—————-

Pluto will always be a planet to me. Now matter what these people say. F-you “science guys” who say that my favorite planet now has to become my favorite “minor” plant… I don’t really like Mercury all that much, so I have decided that it is no longer a plant. That’s it Mercury your out. Screw you.

—————-

One more note on Florida… It is 2 degrees cooler than the surface of the Sun here.

Maybe I do want it to fall into the ocean never to return…