nebulous

I’m flying to new zealand in one month and eight days. I have two weeks of work between then and now, so that means I have 3 weeks of not-work time to sort out my shit, say some goodbyes, and come up with a “plan” of sorts. I have a year long visa! So theoretically I’ll be there for a year. I’m going there to drink lots of coffee, feel a lot of crazy intense emotions, most likely loneliness and sadness and fear and a grand sense of accomplishment every once in awhile. And awe and wonder at the beauty of the world. And to write a book.

Because, like, I couldn’t possibly write a book in America. Because for some reason, working at a coffee shop in NZ is totally OK but if I were to do it in this country I’d feel like a failure. All crappy reasons and whatnot for needing to leave the country in order to accomplish a major life goal, but what the hell! I’m mostly just hoping it will work!

I’m leaving the boy I’ve spent the last six months of my life with. It was as close as I’ve come to living with someone and falling in love with them at the exact same time. We’ve been traveling together for at least two weeks of every month since April and when we weren’t traveling together we were writing each other pages of pages of love letters, to be delivered to each other by a man who I used to think I was in love with but am not. This being while we are working out in the desert, taking dirt naps and making fire out of sticks and trying to figure out how to best help our students on their paths. It was wonderful, indescribable, painful, beautiful, colorful, angry, comfortable, and I want to go on and on but what is there? I love him and he loves me and we’re breaking up because we’re not willing to sacrifice our locations for each other and long-distance doesn’t seem too appealing to either of us. So we’re parting with a maybe-someday-but-no-expectations relationship death sentence.

I’m at home with my parents for the next week, and then I’m going to Seattle for my only cousin’s wedding. My dad has made me cry twice since I arrived a week ago. Not too bad. Central Montana is incredibly beautiful in September. The fields are soft golden wheat with robin’s egg blue mountains solid in the distance and the unending blue sky, and when you dip down into the Judith River valley there are flames bursting from the sides of every creek and water source boasting willow, cottonwood, and aspen on its banks.

My solid plans for New Zealand are negligible. I’m flying into Christchurch and plan to spend at least two nights there in a hostel so I can kill the jetlag and orient myself a little bit. Then I want to hop on a bus and take about 10 – 20 days checking out the 5 different cities I think I’d be interested in settling down in (and of course that involves checking out the wilderness areas around them). I have been trying a little bit to do internet research on different cities but there’s just no way to know what a city’s going to be like until you go there.

I want to stop traveling and have a home somewhere, with a garden and neighbors to cook for and a coffee shop to work in and a place to write.

Clea

PS If you want me to send you letters from NZ, private note me your address. Letter writing is definitely going to be a really big priority on my list of things to do and the more the merrier!