Haikus: Moving North

There is far too much to write from the 15 hour drive (yeah, I hauled ass in that truck), to write everything in detail.  Instead, I've expressed it all in haikus. Some are reflective, some...less so. 

Texas

Face is stained in salt

Glasses smudged and soaked

Pull over. 

Focus on being in a truck

Passing another truck

Feel like a badass. 

Deliberately defy orders

Check Facebook and text while driving.

Lonely. 

Pick-up truck with monster wheels and 

Fake steer horns on the top.

Temporarily pleased to leave. 

Oklahoma

Last stop for Braums

In Norman, OK

My ice cream drips fast.

Saw a tumbleweed blown by the wind

Sweeping down the plains.

All I think about is Broadway.

Kansas

“I will not get lost in Witchita.”

I promise myself.

Take a wrong turn.

Silos are farm phalluses.

Like country skyscrapers.

Too much lonely silence.

Missouri

Kansas City in
Kansas City.

Music appropriateness.

Posted sign:

“$10,000 fine for hitting construction worker”

Kansas City road rage.

Longest stretch.

Missouri Missouri

Misery.

Iowa

Visible difference between

Missouri and Iowa.
Farms? Democrats? Perspective.

Osceola, Iowa:

We meet once again.

I am a creature of habit.

Minnesota

Blue state,

Blue heart.

I got the blues.

Still can’t get musicals out of my head.

Looking for Avenue Q in Chicago,

Worrying about RENT.

Moving In, First Day

Narrow corners on a three-floor staircase.

Full size box spring won’t fit.

Demoted to mattress on the floor

No closet.

Amazon delivers.

“Closet.”

Dinner at fancy eatery.

Truffle fries.

Late night snack at bowling alley.

Rock and roll bingo.

Trivia AND bingo, all in one.

New tradition.

No closet, blank walls, no box spring.

Adjusting abruptly to city life.

Feels like home more than ever.

Beginnings and Ends

It's my last night in the Chateau LLV as one of the L's. There's an echo in my room, the walls are blank, and all that remains is my mattress (on which I am currently residing) and a trashbag in the corner. My truck is carefully packed for the journey north. These are the markers of the borderlines of old and new.

This has been, without a doubt, one of the most wild months this past year; it has not, however, been the hardest.

This time last year, I considered it an achievement if I could make it off the couch to drive to Wendy's and get food.  "Yes. I fed myself today.  That's 10 points for me."  Since those days I've finished a thesis, officially graduated with my master's, taught for a year at TWU, moved again, worked at scarborough faire for a hot minute, and finally figured out the real reason I can't accept compliments very well. Hell of a year.

This past year was a year about boundaries.  It was a year about reviewing and renewing my individual identity. It was a year about finishing projects and finding new directions. It was liminal.

I've decided to close the chapter on the liminality blog because I'm no longer in liminality.  Rather, I am taking back the agency I had lost, and intentionally throwing myself into the liminoid. Last year, my state of identity was more liminal: finished with coursework but still in thesis land, out of a relationship and negotiating that identity, unemployed, very depressed. Not optional. Little agency.

This month, I sold my car, packed a truck, and took some risks resulting in (temporary) unemployment that will (hopefully) eventually end up better in the end.  Intentional. Full of agency.

905 liminality street, was about negotiating a liminal identity- for an entire year.

This blog, this year, will be about adventure in the liminoid.

Allons-y!

Everything must always come to an end. Otherwise, nothing would ever get started. - The Doctor