so it's manos no more.

that's right. i've formally given my notice at the old not-for-profit, and i'm on to other pursuits. while i'm looking forward to recouping some of my nights and weekends, i'm a little sad--i just love these goofy bastards.

but i'm disturbed at myself and my generation (and probably my socio-economic class, to be exact), because we just have a hard time sitting still. we're movers away--we left home to go to college, and then we left our new homes--in the college towns--to go to other homes. some of us went to other countries (marissa: dove sei? brandi: afrikaa bambataa! tooks: texas?!) and why not? we've got money, education, possibilities. we've trotted the globe, tamed lions, rode elephants, stroked llamas, wrestled emus, and taken pictures of whole menagerie with wildly expensive, impossibly tiny digital cameras. and we've emailed the pictures home to mom and dad and nana and papa with sadly short notes: "got the check--thanks! aren't the himalayas wild? check out how short my porter is!!!" and then it's on to the next location. eventually we settle down a little, hundreds or thousands of miles from our "hometowns." of course, we make it home for thanksgiving and x-mas, some of us for easter if we're lucky. we phone home once a week like good little boys and girls, and mom's real good about not crying too much until she hangs up when we call on mother's day.

but then it's our birthday and we realize that it's home where we want to be, with everybody around us, nevermind that home's hardly home except for mom and dad and nana and papa, and that now instead of just one home we've got home home and college home and foreign home and current home and it just aches, 'cause everybody in the same place at the same time could only happen if we all got sucked into a black hole or we're obliterated by a meteor like the dinosaurs, which, in either case, would put a heck of a damper on things.

and sure, you've got to love the one you're with. and sure, austin is approximately six million times more fun and interesting and exciting than good ol' woostah, mass, the armpit of the commonwealth. and sure, we rich snots, hot shits we thought we were, always used to laugh at the townies, who spend their whole lives in one town, someimtes in the same house. we sure were glad we learned to talk unaccented, grammatically-correct english and we headed off to stuffy college located in beautiful prissy, richstate. and then it was off to trot said globe.

but when the townies have a birthday, their buddies haul them off to the usual dive, and then get them horribly, absurdly, piss-themselves drunk, and they write unspeakable things on their faces when they pass out on the living room sofa and then leave them in the center of town at five a.m. so everybody sees them and almost pee themselves laughing. and then when they eventually stagger home, their moms yell at them and help scrub the indelible ink off their foreheads and make them eat soup and go to bed. and they're hung over for two and a half days and then it's back to work for the lumber company or the department of public works.

these are the luckiest people in the world.

be cursed by blessings with me,
TR