LAX - BOS

on going the wrong way

I’m writing this on the plane heading back to Boston from LA. West to east is my least favourite direction to travel, because despite the fact that it is much faster (good work, prevailing winds!), it feels anathema to me, moving away from where I feel I belong and back to the place I’d really rather leave.

If we’ve had more than a three minute conversation in the last eight years, I have probably mentioned that I hate Boston. This is boring now. It has become a schtick, and not a very funny one. I have tried being optimistic and starry-eyed, joined (and then quit) various groups. I’ve bought memberships to museums and theatres. I’ve gone to talks and screenings and signings. I’ve explored different neighborhoods and made new friends and eaten at all the “hot” spots. I planted daffodils and I watched the leaves change gold.

And the truth is that I really fucking hate this place. The vibes are off, man. There are places that buoy me and places that weigh me down, and this one is a millstone roped around my ankle. I hated Boston when I lived here briefly after college (not because I fell in mad, tortured love with my (very-much-attached) co-star, that was delicious!), and I hated it as soon as we arrived for V’s job eight years ago. In the time I have lived here I have been immeasurably lucky, finding friends I love, a community that supports and adores my kids, and that one coffee shop in walking distance that I like pretty well. I have nothing to complain about! No one should feel sorry for me! As I tell V all the time, I love our life! But I hate, hate, hate this city.

I spent the last five days in LA, writing and hiking and eating and seeing friends. Did you know California is just right there, being sunny? I felt genuinely high the first couple of days, as though my body couldn’t process all the additional vitamin D. I sat next to Olivia Rodrigo at dinner! I didn’t actually go to the beach but I knew I could if I wanted to! Surely the delirium of being without my kids and therefore free to follow the threads of my own desire contributed heavily to my joy bender, but again — some places are heavy, and others are light, and in LA I was walking on air.

But this isn’t about which city is better (fight me). It’s about tension, I think. The friction that can exist in any moment between what we want and what we have. It feels hard, sometimes, to live in our choices. We make so many decisions to get to where we are, decisions we are often barely aware of in their making; to listen too closely to a certain song and imagine the lyrics mean something they don’t; to sway left instead of right on a dance floor; to walk away rather than kiss the person you want to kiss. To write this sentence this way, not the other. These decisions accumulate, and then there you are, the pieces suddenly glued to the board. No one warned me that so much of midlife would be swinging wildly between “I have everything I ever wanted!” and “But now I want something ELSE!”

I chose my choices, as it were, and I regret very little. Sometimes home fits right out of the box, and sometimes you have to wear it around for a few days until the leather softens. We come home again, again and again and again. We are always coming home, if we’re lucky.

chasing the good light

Self Soothing

A thrifted grey Uniqlo sweatshirt. Heated Rivalry (the memes alone!). Lacquered Up, the perfect holiday red. Wearing the above (nearly all thrifted) outfits in LA. How much I love my kids after five days away from them. Sorry, Baby and Marty Supreme, an absolutely unhinged double feature. The prospect of heading west again in three days to drink a Milano-Torino in front of the fire in my parents’ house by the ocean.