Response/Letter to Wherever I May Roam

After reading a good friend's blog, I'd just like to add some of my own thoughts and comments. Click here to read the starting point of this conversation.

There's a lot of love about this piece, chica: I love that you'd love to leave. I love that you see the world is your oyster. I love that you know that you'd even rock it. I love the design you see in people--"We just keep striving for it."—it, being, the word for perfect happiness.


I have been—like you, very much like you—contemplating roots and wings. We're at that age. There is something itching beneath my skin—I think it's wings. I coughed up a feather the other day and thought, well, that does it. These are pinions intended to scratch and prod my bird bones, and they and I are both restless in this body. I want to spread them, and this is a visceral want. And it's want, as from seeing what you've wrote, I think you understand.

There is a love, and deeper curiosity, for the places we can't reach when we're young. Sometimes, when you talk about leaving (and you're always talking about leaving, and we're always talking about leaving: graduation, college, jobs, workforce, marriage, children, the things we've been promised) I think that it's because you don't love the soil your planted on. And sometimes that scares me, because we're friends, and it scares me to think that our friendship isn't worth much as you dig in your heels, trying to get up and out, isn't worth much.

But then I also think, that's a little hypocritical of me, isn't it? A little ironic, all of us: pushing us to jump out of the nest, like flightless birds who have a plan but no means, and then when the time comes we get scared and start edging away as fast as we can.

I hope you visit all those places you want to, and I want you to have a fucking fantastic time when you do. Hop on those airplanes and get the hell out of Dodge, chica. But I hope you don't forget what you leave there, either. Rock the hell out India, and Scotland, and England, and learn every language there is to learn and then two more, and maybe get a tattoo, because Lord knows just how much you need to get in touch with your rebellious side--And do so while not getting caught by your parents, like, two years later (You know what I'm talking about). And do so carefully, no more Ross Roads. Ok, maybe a couple of more Ross Roads, but not your car, and make sure everyone is wearing their seat belt (And you know who I'm talking to, you tumbling weed, you).

And I hope you think the same of me.

LOVE YOUR FRIEND,

BZ XOXOXO