Amtrak to Nowhere.

I'm on an Amtrak bound for nowhere. Rhode Island and New England farms and towns speckle the countryside like a patchwork quilt of urban design, artistic merit, and natural design. Yet, this train ride leaves me gently rocking on the rails knowing this phase of my life, prolonged jaunt, is nearing a close. My New York story is done, long over really. I've been here probably a year too long. Certainly not a year too short.

The city I've dubbed my longtime lover, repeat offender, and continual defender of my soul has crossed over and the romance has died, the rose colored passion has turned to grey skies and muddy sidewalks, and the springtime blooms and promise of brighter skies fails to turn the charms back on. Instead, the ache of heartbreak eases in like an old uninvited friend on a cold, snowy winter's night. I stand there shivering, at the door, letting him in just so I can shut the deepest gusts of fury out. My teal walls and orange kitchen whispering of a Mediterranean dream will go back to white soon enough. I'll pack my books, scarves, and sweaters, and perhaps by then I'll know where I'm shuttling them off too.  My lease has to expire first, give me a year to point the bullet at the target. 

I've long said that in my 40th year I wanted to travel to India, spend a month or more.  The girl allergic to the red pepper family longs, dreams, and yearns to travel the subcontinent most likely living off mangos. Mountain ashrams, travels on the toy train...dips of my toes, legs, and body into the waves of the Indian coasts . . . Maybe India will happen. Maybe I'll stay awhile, a long while. 

Maybe I'll be her again. She still believed. 

I can always be a guide in Paris.  The Francophile in me, the teenager who embraced French over a more practical language like Spanish, and the romantic lover and writer of visual appeal would be filled to the gills. Yet, the logic of me knows that the love of Paris is crippled by financial burden.  I would be no better there than I am here cobbling part-time employment to scrape by with rent, never affording health insurance, and having now depleted my meager of meager retirement accounts with two loans this past year. Romance and wonderlust are quelled with the logic of longevity and the need for future designs. 

Sometimes I think about returning to the left coast. I started out that way. I ponder. If I still believed in signs I would say yes. Much like Santa Clause, happy endings, and love based relationships surviving the long haul I don't believe in signs anymore. 

Boston, though, has long--perhaps always--felt like a comfortable old friend. The south end and redline have long fit me like old, comfortable shoes...a well worn pair, with worked out soles, scuffs, and the smell of leather loved and worn. 

Maybe I'll ignite that old Boston affair. It would certainly be cheaper than New York. Maybe I'll let the Boston streets usurp me, warming my toes in the summer and freezing my outter senses all winter.  In many ways it is the geographic counterpart to Seattle . . . Seattle, my original hometown. 

Wherever I go, I need to write more as the ivory tower wants to salivate over my elongated c.v. while perpetually casting me aside like I am an ugly redheaded step child. In a lot of ways I feel like I've wasted a large part of my life, fighting to survive and win in a profession I excel at but will forever be the working class child castoff who overstepped her caste.  

And that is what an Amtrak to nowhere looks like; it's riddled with the realizations and choices we have to make. The painful decisions. The age old heartbreak flooding the kitchen floor, ruining the newly laid tile.