One Word

I'm reading a book right now that my sister-in-law handed to me before I left for the West. It's about a writer who travels for one year after a painful divorce to discover those parts of her that were missing in her seemingly perfect marriage and career suburban life. It couldn't have been a better gift at a better time.

There are days that all I have done while here has been to hide out in an internet cafe and obsessively look for the right job that's out there for me. Even though I have more time I haven't been writing as much as I could, and there are some days where time just slips away and I find myself missing my yoga studio in Charlottesville rather than going to the new one here.

I haven't really made any friends while in Las Vegas, but stayed contented with relationships over the phone and internet while discovering this new, changing intimacy with my new boyfriend. There are mountains that stick up into the hot, beautiful, puffy-white, blue sky. It serves as a backdrop to my Honda, Virginia plates, a new, vibrating muffler barely attached by a wire to the back of the car that I can clearly hear over the empty box that used to be my car stereo. Two boxes sit in my trunk over a pile of clothes and the quilt that my grandmother made for me. There's no room in the bedroom my boyfriend (yikes!) and I share with the two still-strangers we call roommates.

I had a second round job interview this morning with a yoga clothing store opening up in the mall on the strip here in Las Vegas. It was more of a conversation than an interview, and to my amazement an organization that values, trusts, and expects from its employees actually exists. When I walked into the interview from the mall, Hootie and the Blowfish playing in the background, I began to imagine the mall during the holidays, a Hootie Holiday Special CD playing, people everywhere buying gifts, and thought to myself: what am I doing here? But when I met with the woman who is going to be my new manager if I get the job, all of those concerns disappeared. I knew this organization was different and that it lived by the principles that governed it. We even discussed a goal of mine: to open up a store in Asheville. I felt this goal come alive as we talked.

I'm not sure I can call Las Vegas a home or that this is the city I will discover myself in. But I do know that I've found something big and life-changing. For the first time in awhile, I'm starting to feel like this risk paid off.

So I'm going back to LA to wait and hear the news about this job. I'm going to relax by the beach and celebrate a friend's birthday. What I didn't realize about quitting my job and moving is the time I would be given for my thoughts. This can be both a blessing and a curse. I've used my time to find job opportunities and even though it has paid off I plan on relaxing, writing, and traveling during these next few weeks.

In the book that I'm reading she writes about a conversation she had in Italy about cities. And that there is one word that can describe each city. I tried to apply this to the cities I know, then to myself, as she begins to in the book. My word for Las Vegas: TRANSIENT. (I thought about HOT and GREEDY but decided to go with a friendlier word.) My word for Washington, D.C.: STIFF. My word for Charlottesville: PASSAGE. (This is for two reasons: there are many back ways of getting around traffic in Cville and it takes a little while to find these passages and Cville is a liberal city right in the middle of rural Virginia which I see as a passageway to other towns and cities as well as a haven from abstinence-only sex education programs and Virgil Goode (yes, that is his name).

Like the book, I haven't thought of the word I think describes me. Some that immediately come to mind are DIFFICULT, RESTLESS, and FELINE (my best friend always says I'm like a cat: I like to be touched when I want to be touched and left alone when I want to be left alone). I once asked my mom to describe how I was as a child; walking around in the handmade Easter outfits my grandmother would make for us. Without hesitation she answered: determined. You've always been so determined.