Honor Thy Blog... 100 posts, and a year since the move

So! This is my century post.

100 POSTS!! WHOOOOO YEAH!!!

I never thought I'd keep up with this blog for this long. I'm not good about keeping journals, electronic or otherwise. I've been working on keeping a longhand journal, but it's been sitting dormant for over a month now (not surprising). With blogs, I usually get bored. I feel as if I'm posting those kind of I-had-cereal-for-breakfast entries that nobody gives a damn about, including me. But then I go back and read over them and see that even in the most boring entries there are things that make me remember other things that I'd have probably forgotten about. It's an exercise in perpetual nostalgia.

So. WHOO!!! ::spray of fireworks:: And on to other things.

Today is the one year anniversary of me moving to SC. So for a minute I'm going to reminisce about the last year, and Indianapolis, and all that good shit. So, here goes. If you're bored, hell, go back to YouTube or take a nap or something.

A year ago, I burned a new CD to add to the collection in the CD holder that lives on my sun visor, packed my truck (an aging 1994 Ford Explorer, Eddie Bauer edition) with as many boxes as it would hold, and set out for a new life in South Carolina. It was a Saturday, and I left at 7 am or so, so it wasn't even really all that warm yet (because Indiana doesn't have the kinds of hell-on-earth summers that we do down here). I kissed my cats goodbye (especially Max, who was still a kitten), took a good long look around at my beautiful apartment, and headed down the stairs with a mingled sense of fear, sadness and excitement.

The drive down was long and uneventful. I calmed myself with music, especially the new mix I'd made. I still listen to that mix on a regular basis. There's a song on it called "Shut Your Eyes" by Snow Patrol. To this day, hearing that song makes my heart rate slow down. It's like some kind of audio balm. The morning was misty and green. I stopped at Starbucks, got breakfast and hit the road. Ten hours later I was in Lyman. I'm glad I drove - flying is too fast for a trip like that. It was a pilgramage.

Indianapolis is starting to fade for me now. I guess that's not surprising, considering it's been a year to the day. There are still things I remember with perfect clarity, things I want to hold on to. Things like the herons that lived around the lake behind our apartments, or the huge colony of turtles that shared the lake with the herons (and ducks and geese and fish and raccoons and a hedgehog we named Herman who liked to dance in circles along the edge of the brambles near the lake and all sorts of other woodland creatures - all living on a tiny square of undeveloped floodplain that was on the north side of Indy, off 82nd street). On hot days, the turtles would climb up on the shore of the lake and sun themselves. Sometimes, they'd stake out logs, and then the smaller turtles would climb on top of the bigger turtles until there was a mound of them, one neatly stacked on top of the other, largest to smallest, perfectly symmetrical.

Things like the perfect tree over on 96th street, with its wending branches and gnarled roots knobbling improbably out of the black Indiana soil, or the way the sky seemed ten times bigger in the late afternoon, stretching on eternally over the flat plains, unbroken by hills or even tall trees. The taste of Da Vinci's Italian Kiss gelato - good lord, it was delicious. Or the way I loved to lie on my stomach in our bed, looking out those huge windows in our bedroom that looked out over the lake. I could spend hours just meditating like that. In the summertime the fireflies made their homes in the brush between our building and the lake, and just after twilight they'd all come out to dance and play - literally hundreds, if not thousands of them. It was charmingly overwhelming. Amazing - like a faerie dance, a magical congregation meeting each night at the same time just under our bedroom windows. Breathtaking.

In the last year I've grown comfortable with being in SC again, learned that I really can live here and be responsible and not fall into my old habits of self-destruction. I still feel like I just got here, though.

I've more to post on this but I need to get my thoughts organized for it, so I'll leave it here for now. I'm smiling as I think of those stacked turtles, those fireflies sketching their way across the velvety darkness of post-twilight, dancing in the darkness, playing along the firey rims of my imagination.