[HPFGU-OTChatter] Attack of the Skrewt Spawn

[Amanda Geist]

> Urk. Amanda, remind me again exactly *why* you live in Texas? *grin*

I was born here. To lift a line from Calvin and Hobbes, a biological
conspiracy. I wasn't consulted.

It does not seem to have really registered with Jan--although I tell him
every summer and after other major interactions with the insect world--that
if we moved somewhere I *choose* to be, I can't really bitch. If I picked
the place, it's my own fault and I won't point up my bad judgement. However,
at the moment I'm in a place not of my own choosing, which Fate has thrust
upon me, and I bitch all the time. I'm not pleasant to be around from about
March to October (although this has been a mild summer, I don't think we
even broke 100 yet! Wow....).

My dream is to live somewhere where they *do not* have scorpions and they
*do* have snow. That doesn't seem too much to ask. I want to run a B&B
somewhere. I've flown to Pittsburgh and driven back down to Charlotte, NC;
I've been in New York state (Downsville, Ithaca) and driven from there to
Ohio. I've been in Canada (Niagara Falls). These are areas so lovely that my
soul weeps and I want to just stop the car and get out and stay there and
screw the details; everything suddenly seems less important than my staying
in a place that my heart resonates to. I had never, in all my life, been
anywhere that my soul smiled just to look out the window, no matter my
emotional state, until I lived in Charlotte for a few months.

I want to live somewhere with trees, real trees taller than houses, with
graceful straight trunks, that form Gothic arches over streets far above the
streetlights. I want to live somewhere I can see mountains. South Texas is a
flat land, with lovely sunsets that reach around half the circle of the
horizon. Still, sometimes there are thunderheads in the distance or a front
is coming through and the clouds pile onto themselves on the horizon and
reach into the sky. In the sunset, in the twilight, driving down a road and
seeing the clouds against the sky in front of me, I can persuade myself to
see mountains there.... and I remember again how very far up the sky they
can reach, how they dominate the land they look over, how they color every
moment just by being there, and the air tastes different in my mouth, cooler
and more remote, and my skin remembers autumn on it even in the summer, and
I wonder if this time, maybe, if I do everything just exactly right, I'll
notice a turning of road that I'd overlooked before, take it, and reach
them......

I know that there are people who find that Texas speaks to their souls; I'm
just not one of them. Much of my belief in reincarnation (don't tell my
priest) stems from how "in the wrong place" I felt growing up; Texas as a
land does not call to me. I didn't realize how much it didn't, until I found
places that did. My oldest friend, Catherine, and I both hate coming home
from trips; that last day that sees you back in Texas, getting back into the
cedar and mesquite trees and savannah, driving forward and yearning back.

The part of Texas that I'm in is the best that I've found, if you are still
in Texas. I'm here until I'm somewhere else. And I will live somewhere that
makes my soul sing, before I die. J'espere.

--Amanda, waxing poetic, my heavens