End

There will be no more posts from me here. There are no more vagabonds. There is no more we. There is no more Westary.

If you are interested in reading what I write, you can find it here:

Lighthearted and Afoot

–Mary

People Who Love Me

So I go to church. In a bar. But I still refuse to call it church because church and religion and Christians have broken my heart. So when people ask me what I do on Monday nights I mumble something about going to a bar where this guy talks and stuff…

A few weeks back, the pastor asked us to talk in small groups about what kind of home we grew up in, what kind of love we experienced as children. Most of the people in my group were older than me, and a lot of their sentiments were similar. Their dads were brisque and distant, but when they said, “I love you,” or “I’m proud of you,” it really meant something. Most everyone’s mom was more verbal with her love and praise, but some people never even received that. During this conversation, I stayed pretty quiet. Not because I never received love from my parents or something; on the contrary. I didn’t think it was appropriate to brag in church, but I guess I can’t lie, either: My parents think I’m the shit.

Goodnight, Soulmate

It was one of the first days after I flew out to Albuquerque and started traveling around New Mexico with Weston when he played me “Long Distance Lullaby” by Stornoway. That was how we communicated in those first days after I showed up on his traveling doorstep, exhausted from the task of completely wrecking my life in such a short span of time. I had hopped on the plane to find the one person I knew would understand everything I had to say, and when I found him, I didn’t have to say anything. That’s one of the beautiful things about Weston–he’s not afraid of quiet. And I’m not talking about the slight lull in conversation or driving with no music on kind of quiet. I’m talking about hazy, permeating, soul-rendering silence. Here’s another beautiful thing about Weston: at the end of the silence, he doesn’t ask me what I was thinking that whole time. He doesn’t try to sum up all that I learned by shutting up and trying to sort it all out. He lets me be.

Writers are Liars

I like writing. I like the process of writing. It makes my brain feel good. But sometimes I get discouraged about writing, especially descriptions, because I feel like I never know what the hell I’m talking about.

I read really great pieces by authors who describe everything in so. much. detail. They talk about the subtle shades of juniper berries and the composition of concrete sidewalks. They describe the veins in beech tree leaves and the faint crows feet around their mothers’ eyes. They write raw and real things about blood and sex and history. But they’re making it all up.

Couchsurfing as Commandment: Don’t Get Comfortable

Once, in a job interview, I told the truth. The supervisor interviewing me asked what I wanted to do in the future, and I told him I wanted to write a Sex-and-the-City-style blog, but about religion. I’m not sure how sexy this blog is, but I find myself thinking and writing about religion quite a bit. Life goal achieved, apparently.

Hence, Coincidence

I met my neighbor Nick on Wednesday. I was on my front porch reading the Westword and drinking a Sierra Nevada; he was on his front porch two houses down, spitting tobacco into a Great Divide Yeti bomber. I walked over and sat in one of the plastic lawn chairs on his porch and we talked for a while about how he was moving back to Philadelphia in May to go to PA school. Then Nick told me he was moving out of his house on Saturday because he hated our landlord and wanted to move in with his friend for his last two months in Denver.

“Well, I guess I’ll never see you again,” I said as I started walking back to my own porch. “But it was good to meet you.”

Stolen from an Old Love

A professor I had once told our class that the sign of adulthood was “having a significant number of regrets.” I thought for a long time that I was stunted because I had few, if any, regrets. Then I began to realize that maybe it was this professor who was stunted. I believe the true sign of growing up is not having regrets, but learning from experiences that could have easily been regretted. The difference, in my opinion, is everything.

Attachment Disorder

I’m not sure why people are so interested in my sleeping arrangements. I’ve had more conversations in the last two months about sleeping on an air mattress  than I thought would happen in a lifetime. There seems to be a plethora of real beds going around the Greater Kansas City area, and everyone knows someone with an extra.

Hereditary Wanderlust

The other day, I tried to quit my job. For the third time. My managers are pretty cool, so they didn’t give me much grief about it, but they were curious to know why I wanted to leave this time.

“Do you have another job?” Doug asked.

I shook my head.  “Nah,” I said. “I just feel like I should go somewhere and do something epic.”

“Why are you always trying to run away?” Dave asked.

His question stung a little bit.  “I dunno,” I shrugged. It was an honest answer.

The Problem with Getting Attached.

I look around my apartment–boxes, crates, piles of things that don’t quite fit into those boxes and crates and instead are precariously stacked on top and around them.  A mental map guides the chaos: mine behind the couch, Weston’s by the door, donate by the window, sort against the wall.  Sort is always the hardest.