Last Blueberry Days

TQ texts a text I have been getting a lot lately: “How’s Maine?” I tell her I’m loving it and I am sad to leave. She tells me she’s glad I have liked it, bummer I’m sad, but it’s “good you’re coming home.” I respond, “It’s magic and I get a free brownie sundae every night.” (Everyone on cast gets a free menu item after each show. Most get a beer, or some whiskey. But, oh, not I.) I see the three dots. “Whoa whoa whoa. I did not know about that.”

I learned a lot when I read the memoir of a woman sentenced to life in prison—terrible details,  but the thing that has stuck more than any other scrap is how adverse to change the writer was. Of course she didn’t want to move to a new prison or switch jobs, but she also didn’t like happy change. She didn’t want to celebrate a holiday and have a differently scheduled afternoon. She didn’t want the food schedule to change—even though it’s all disgusting.

My friend Bug doesn’t seem satisfied unless things are changing. Rapidly and harshly even. She starts to get restless three months into relationships ("Can we get married yet?") and can't watch twenty minutes of a movie without also watching YouTube videos. But so many of us, I think, are like the penitentiary’s leading lady. When I first arrived on this lobster island, it’s not that I didn’t like it, I just had to adjust, and that felt uncomfortable. But, I’m a morning person, but these strangers (they seem nice, and yet), but this style of play, and the air tastes much too fresh.

Snail friend on my morning run.

When I took the job I started saying this granola thing about leaving Chicago and clearing my head, kind of knowing it was just one of those things to say--akin to "can't complain" or some trite slop. But low and behold, if you build it, they will come. I feel better at improv (a bit), more centered, special, focused, ready to snip away fat and be. It was a thing I said until it was a thing that happened.

I am not ready to leave. Two weeks from today I will be lecturing, probably about thesis statements, and that image plus the image of me on an island waking up to gull caws and whoopee pie signs is not computing. We performed an improvised musical last night called “Why is my cucumber purple?” and then I thought on the sidelines about those emails I have been meaning to send. I accidentally opened my Bus Tracker app today and almost threw up.