retracing my steps

I've had a strange week, where I've ended up revisiting, alone, a lot of places important to me in the past, the places that are the building blocks of my psychic memory of myself. I escaped from total chaos in northampton and finally gave in and took dustyrose and went to my mom's house on the cape. This is the longest I've spent in brewster since 1996, the summer between my freshman year at simon's rock and my first and sophomore year at risd, when I probably spent about a month here. Other than that, in the past ten years, I've been here for two nights at the most, maybe twice a year. And now I've been here eight days. 

And because until last november I've been in a serious monogamous relationship for most of my adult life, this is also among the handful of times I've been home (mom's house, funny how quickly I've started referring to this as 'home' since I haven't had one of my own lately) alone and not entertaining a significant other since I was a teenager. 

In this past week: all my favorite beaches and church thrift stores and ponds and woods and marshes and swamps and coffeeshops of the cape, the risd campus, my old apartment in providence, downtown new bedford and the walk between our apartment and the bookstore, the highway between northampton and new bedford and providence and brewster, a lot. 

New Bedford: where my idea of what things should look like came from. 

Brewster: the lake upon who's shores I grew up. 

Providence: my first apartment, my first love, first drink, first sushi. 

lots of driving, lots of ocean, lots of walking, lots of picking up shells, trips to drugstores buying makeup and other stuff like a teenager, loud music in my car, 

places I haven't seen since childhood, and have never seen through my own eyes as an adult (by which I mean, just looked at them, not showing them to someone else while retelling the story of myself). 

Wearing my boots and crazy vintage dresses all week, enjoying sleevelessness and my new since last summer arm tattoos, my badass boots on the sand of the beaches of the cape, big sunglasses and my ipod, guided by voices and pavement and the silver jews and modest mouse and bjork while I think think think, sound of waves in the background, the path around slough pond, the sidewalk of new bedford between orchard street and pleasant street that I've been walking alone since I was six, the brick sidewalks of benefit street in providence echoing my footsteps more then ten years ago when I first fell in love and I walked all night, when I first learned how to walk all night, 

dreaming of my friends, and of bridges, and of nail polish bottles lined up on a mantle. 

All this was unplanned, but the timing is seeming strangely fitting, as I have this weird feeling my life is about to change really soon really fast really majorly. 

maybe not. I don't know. I think I'm right and I think I'm wrong and I'm sure what I want and then I'm not and then I remember, it's not exactly about what I want, if it's going to happen then it is. 

This has been the week of revisiting, and of waiting. Past and future, edge of some sort of cliff.