After months of joyless weekends the semester is complete; three years told and kept quiet later in Beautiful BC, Canada, The World, and I are a graduate all over again. The degree is conferred in May when I shall commence thenceforth as Meg Holle the Librarian—a master of library and information studies, a fearless champion of the vaguely menacing intellectual control, relevancy, retrieval a friend of books and a force of finding Nature for clueless freshmen and faculty alike. *Fixes bun and flexes might.*

In the meantime, classes are done, and I am free to tie myself to creative dragons, black holes and awkward bedside work spaces. Spring unfolds, hunched shoulders self shaming for sitting in my room when the sky is blue and the tide makes nice. But I have too many parallel dimensions, intersecting directions, no pressing obligations and some sizable savings—a formidable résumé, yes, that suggests I leg-up the ladder, but I wish to have a hiatus first. Who knows when I will have this freedom again, to spit out my pride and swallow more ramen, to take a timeout tune in to listen to the bent and raucous imagination that has waited in my wings and now weights them, breaks them, begs my attention.

Not much to report, yet, and the best-laid may implode. But I am plotting. Storytell-scheming. Here is a hint. It’s all you get.

I plan to stick around here till Hope gets me health care or my visa expires late summer. I would like very much to be back in Minneapolis / St. Paul and have my eyeballs skinned, ears to the gravel for opportunities that suit me. Three years later, I still listen to MPR constantly, miss my friends, miss my family. Miss the weather. Miss complaining about the weather. How long can you leave, how many places in between till you are no longer from your sharpest memories? And nothing, naturally, is without complication. I love it out here yet nothing holds me, and whose fault is that? Is this fault a crack—a flaw—or only a feeling, a suppressed but supported fact? that I’m friendly, foxy, like fun and am wicked funny but don’t fit or don’t want to feel strongly about anything that is temporary but never had to be, had I burned that bridge before it collapsed and was built back up in my absence.

I’ve no doubt I could do it all again in another new city, did I let career opportunities lead me. Breathe different air and walk strange streets. Discover the best deals on almond milk and fake meats, find my lychee tea and industrial fix-me-uppers. But I don’t want to. I want to go home. I could write on this all night for the rest of my life, I suppose. But I’ll save the real cheer jeer and sentimentality for when the intention becomes a reality.

Until that time… summer. I’ll be taking up my trouser hems, considering a haircut, eating cold beans, combing the beach and capturing moments while I can. I have this habit of headphones and irresistible beats on busy streets waiting for busses busting as loose as I dare, caring too much about strangers’ staring and thinking I’m daft. I don’t want to cause a seen! scene an accident into being! become crazy though it seems it’s in my blood and inevitable. Then one evening I saw someone else shaking his ass all over the sidewalk, waiting for the same bus as me. His style was vaguely Country Western, a singular line dance looking all silly kicking back his heels and side-shuffling, extra incongruous in his zipped hoodie and spiked hair.

I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Wouldn’t trade my grin for anything.