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The Misfits

Jillian — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:55:07 +0000

What if I’ve become too strange to go back?
strangerinastrangelandyoucantgohomeagainpeoplearestrangewhenyoureastrangertheresnoplacelikehome
These are the fleet streaming thoughts that pluck me out of sleep at four am.
itsabanditsthatarthurmillermarilynmonroemoviehesthemaniaccharacterinagoodmanishardtofind
But I wouldn’t say I’m too terribly anxious.

Not like the months leading up to leaving. I was a wreck, all panic attacks and acting out. Going home is both easier and more frought. We have high expectations for each other, America and I. Am I ready to return? Will America deliver on her promises? I can’t stay here, not a moment longer. Four months and one moment longer. I hope it’s enough time.

What if we’re misfits who will never find a home? We’ll wander the earth forever, searching for roots that don’t exist.

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

“I don’t need anything except this…and that’s the only thing I need, is this”

Jillian — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:27:59 +0000

In order to arrive in Mexico unencumbered and unbearably light we sold, stored and defenestrated* the majority of our material possessions. (Our spiritual possessions we thought might come in handy) While living in the Suites del Sol, browsing the Sunday markets we aquired Cervantes, you may recall – we plan to go nowhere without his aquiline nose, noble beard and slightly warped and ravaged frame keeping us company. In the subsequent three years we have managed to cram up another house with crap, and by crap I mean elegant home furnishings and one-of-a-kind objets d’art. We even had extra closets built to accomodate our consumer potential. We’ve loaded the guest house to the gills, filled cubbies and bookcases and stocked every shelf. It’s getting all Collyer brothers up in here, so it must be time to exit.

As I told you last Tuesday we’re leaving it all. That’s the plan at this point, five months out. But the sweet sorrow of parting with our stuff just might be too much to take, in addition to saying so long to our beloved Tripod. Every item was hardwon, is treasured, was bought with intention and feels like ours together. In our last New Haven apartment were primary colored remnants of Malcolm’s dorm life, representations of my granny chic phase, and various uncurated piles of papers and sweaters we just couldn’t move past. Most of those things I do not miss or even remember and I wonder if the same will happen after we’ve extracted ourselves from the Azcue sofa set, hand painted rustic chairs that bite the backs of your thighs, the Christmas Vihuela and overpriced Liverpool storage baskets.

Every iteration has its own set of wares and context, as always, is critical. This period, which will be known to Future Malcolm and Future Jillian as alternately “Those lazy, crazy Mexico days” and ” The Yucatecan Renaissance and Last Times of Our Youth”, is populated with art and appliances we’ve found on the street, on the beach, given and received as gifts, and made with our own busy hands. We’re bringing the books that we stubbornly muled down over the course of seven or eight trips to the States. But other than that, we’re traveling light. Really, what do we need?

America is brimming with goods and I intend to gather everything Anthropologie, Restoration Hardware, and Trader Joe’s has to offer and jump into the bobo booty with glee and abandon, as a child into a pile of raked autumn leaves. It was cathartic to purge our old and used belongings. We felt free and Zen ascetic. I believe this process is cyclical and we will one day in the future feel compelled to cast off our treasures and run away to some fresh paradise. But at this point in our adventure we yearn to be conspicuous consumers. It is time to furnish our next incarnation with pleasing and useful things and to do so properly we must also leave some well-loved possessions behind.

* This is a lie

… And We’re Back (But Not For Long)

Jillian — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:59:06 +0000

As it turns out, as we have proven, you can abandon your pressboard life, board a plane to a place you’ve never been and carve out an existence – and a pretty sweet one at that – in an uncanny valley far, but not too far, from home. We didn’t drop off the edge of civilization, though we did test its boundaries. We discovered a little corner of the world and found within it a small place for our own things; perched on the edge of an ocean, tucked between similar, but shabbier concrete boxes, we ensconced ourselves in our own version of home in Mexico. We haven’t grown roots so much as sticky filaments that keep us connected and, I am sure, fettered to the ground here, which so happens to be porous limestone. We will always come back to Yucatan, where we were married, where we built our first house, where we met our dogs, made some peace, laughed, sweat, swam, grieved, and gained perspective, courage, confidence and many more gifts I am sure will not become apparent until we are well settled back in the United States.

This summer we are daring to return. On or about June 18, 2010 we will pack up the pick-up with clothes, books, art, a dog, a map, and not much more than that. We will leave the house furnished – we hope it sells that way. In the meantime my Mother-in-Law will stay here and keep it safe. It is charming as is and if it does not sell soon it will be a perfect vacation home for us next winter, when we will no doubt find the weather less cozy and alluring than we do now. This summer it will be four years almost exactly that we have lived as foreigners in Yucatan, a state of pride and familial piety, independent in many ways of the problems that plague the rest of Mexico. We spent a college-length tenure honing old skills and developing new interests. We escaped our own fears, a downward spiralling economy, and an ordinary life we couldn’t make fit into our romantic expectations. Only now that familiar place beckons; much of what we weren’t ready for is waiting to be picked up, like a sweater discarded barely begun in the knitting basket.

This was a good break from the status quo, “full of adventure, full of discovery.” I am reminded of CP Cavafy’s Ithaka. Many among our friends and family didn’t believe we would actually do it, couldn’t understand why we might want to try. I had considerable doubts, but my belief that there was more to see and do beyond my ken, as well as my confidence in Malcolm prevailed. I was not always as hale and intrepid as I had hoped I would be, but I faced a few demons and conquered some faults. I saw the world and it recogized me, and I am inspired to keep going, to seek out new landscapes and seas and faces. Just not right now. Right now we are both craving home, for, despite its problems and failings America looks shiny, at once familiar and pregnant with possibilities.

We’re taking a drive up country, hugging the coast to Matamoros, across the border to Texas, traveling East until the Atlantic, then due North. After Houston, New Orleans, and Tallahassee, we’ll ride I-95 from Savannah to Charleston, through DC and Philadedelphia, happily sail through terra cognito and finally we will land in Portland, Maine around the Fourth of July. Patriotism!

We began this blog in the months leading up to our expatriation and we recently realized similar feelings were stirring as this new move approaches. We’re plotting and planning again, imagining a second start. In a new city, a new home, we’re heading back to a different America as changed individuals; we’re married now and we have our mostly loyal dog, Olivia with us. It is a rebirth, and we return as heroes, at least in our own minds. I am nothing short of ecstatic at the prospect of living in my own motherland, close to family and friends and things I love deeply, have missed fiercely, and challenges I am ready to meet anew.

But before that adventure comes a journey. I am looking forward to fleet highways and dusty backroads, to topography and geography I have never seen before, to busting out and seeing more of this enormous, diverse, beautiful country. We’re ending this story the right way this time, with a trip cross two countries, holding hands on the bench seat of a champagne F150. You joined us for the drop in and now we’re moving out. Ko’ox!