Sitting here in Cafe Mekka there are so many influences swimming around noisily between my senses, music in my headphones, the grinding coffee machine, new people everywhere, new faces, a new world really, called Nevada City.

We landed from the trip and instead of feeling the launch off energy of faithful hope and new beginnings I kind of collapsed into a troubled half state of worry and disappointment. Disappointed that the trip was over. Disappointed that back in California I was no more close to a new life than when I had left: new life being a career, a direction, no complaining, just doing. Disappointed though in a more vague sense, tired, able to be happily numbly in and out of my parent’s house, mostly in, and afraid to make the big changes.

So it was a period of transition. Kate was in Auburn, diligently going back and forth to Nevada City looking for places for us to call home, while I drove all through the familiar but alien towns of “my” Northern California, Geyserville, Sonoma, Petaluma, San Francisco, looking in all of these places for a place that felt like home in at least some minor way.

Christmas gave me purpose. To spend it with my family for me has always been a sacred obligation, not to be broken, and being with my brothers was crucial for me, I have missed them so much in the last five years, and here they are new people, adults not kids, being not only that but the most amazing people I know.

And then I worked on cleaning out my parents overflowing and overwhelmingly cluttered garage. I mean, just a two car garage filled up stacked up mice running around and boxes full of important and not so imporatant all mixed into one. It took me a good near two weeks of working everyday to sort through it all in any kind of meaningful way. And the whole time I am uncovering trunks full of ancient memories, lost and forgotten locks of hair, family pictures that everytime I saw one made me pause and retreat into a place inside of my mind and self that is still a child. And it stretched me out in all ways, desperately lonely in my parent’s garage of all places, doing something utterly contemptible work wise and yet amazingly fulfilling AND I felt a very worthy duty for the family, necessary to protect the priceless artifacts that had not been eaten up by the passing of time.

And then that ended.

And Kate followed through on this apartment, a chance look one day, a couple of days before Christmas. It was a place we could afford. It was something. We’d been nothing homeless for nine months, couldn’t hurt to have a couch or a bed to call our own. I went and saw it and I really didn’t feel it… I was disappoionted, I nearly broke down the night before we had to tell a yes or no, but decided with Kate that we needed to get SOMETHING going, whatever it would be, and so reluctantly we said yes. And then the landlord calls Kate and reports that things have changed. We can move into HIS old apartment, an amazing spot on top of Deer Creek with a big old living room and high ceilings, big windows, two decks, and a piano on top of it.

Its a turn of fate and luck that I had I hate to admit been waiting for.

And so we packed the U-Haul with everything that had been sitting literally gathering cobwebs, pulled it out, painted all the walls white and established working areas in a few days, perhaps the fastest move in in my history.

So now I’m here. We’re here. The creek whistles its sound around our bedroom through the night. The space has this amazing feeling of freedom to me.

I’m jobless, need work, badly, not just money, but work. I’m desperate for good work.

The music is to come along.

And that, is where I am, today.