Friday, November 09, 2001
Now Maui
I never thought I'd find myself at the bottom of the chronologically sorted Interwoven Journals, but there I am (or was before I submitted this).
Life has been... life.
I guess that's better than the alternatives.
Two weeks ago, I'd long resigned myself to not getting to Maui until the spring, if ever, since there was no one to watch my house here and the house Garrett* was finagling in Maui was, lacking sufficient patronage to cover the rent, about to be rented to someone else.
So I've been making plans for the winter here -- plotting a winter garden (something I've never tried before), looking forward to snow boarding again for the first time in a couple of years, getting to know a few new friends here, expecting a visit from Amanda* in January, getting a kick-ass computer to run sims of some of my recent ideas, cleaning up the yard in general and working on the landscaping, getting a disclavier (midi-equipped piano) and other music equipment so I can finally pursue my interests in music composition, and so on. It was a job of scratching for things to look forward to, to console myself for not going to Maui, but I did it well. I thought things were particularly looking up when I got a call from a friend to see his plot in the community garden nearby, and he sent me home with rooted clippings from his truly impressive passion-fruit vine -- one of my favorite fruits in Maui, and not only do they grow here (much to my surprise) but the purple ones grow here, which are much much better than the yellow ones I found in Maui. (I felt like such an ass for living here all this time and not knowing this -- his vine was planted only a couple years ago and had at one point ninety fruit hanging from it.) Also that day or the day before, I made another crucial step in one of my projects, and felt like I was really getting on a roll -- it's one of those breakthroughs that gives me lots of productive work to do for a while (as opposed to just lying on the floor holding my head, struggling with the complexity of it all...).
And then Michelle tells me she's sick of Vegas, is coming back to San Diego for a while, and could house-sit for me if I want to go to Maui.
And I had to decide in a couple of days, before Garrett* lost the place.
And then I was lost at sea for a while in a storm of ever changing factors, and it's all kind of a blur. (I almost sold my house. Twice. And it wasn't even on the market.) But here I stand, still dripping indecision, a ticket in the mail for a six hour flight scheduled for the onset of flu season, paying rent for half a month before I arrive, for a carpeted house who's prior tenants had cats (which I'm alergic to), signing a year lease when I almost certainly will have to return to take care of the house in six months, with no car to drive while I'm there, just at the beginning of what might have been a fun ski season, and landing in the middle of a dengue fever outbreak expected to last up to a year.
Be careful what you wish for.
Somehow, this time just doesn't have the charm of last time. What's changed? Is it me, or just circumstance?
My intuition says it's just wrong to go right now, but I'm going anyway because I've made promises, because I've bought tickets, because I can too easily imagine everything turning a 180 on me if I stayed, and wishing I'd gone (rotational momentum being high in general right now).
Sometimes choices are clear, when everything seems to align to the same conclusion. And then there are times like now.