audio pilgrimage.

Squinting my eyes to make out the monochrome shape of the car in front of me is not usually my idea of an ideal way to spend a Thursday afternoon. In fact, spending a half-hour in a torrential downpour on I-95 (oh it gets worse…) through Northern Virginia sounds like an episode worthy of an anxiety attack. And in most cases it probably would have been but yesterday was clearly an oddity. Somehow I found a sense of peace among the large drops of water that pelted my car, breaking their round form on my windshield with a loud “snap.”

The thunderstorm was vibrant, providing spectacular bolts of lighting that would work their way through the sky like delicate winding capillaries. Every bright flash warned me for the deafening cracking sound which was always soon to follow.

I was driving home from visiting my family in Bethlehem, Penn., a conflicted city that is trying to find community among rich college students, underpaid Puerto Ricans and unemployed steel workers. To be honest, it's a lot like Burlington, only with Hispanics and mill workers respectively. The trip was short, but since it marked my first long-distance solo road trip, it was one to remember.

One thing that I reconnected with during my trip was my music collection. To be honest, I am often times ashamed out out of touch I am with music. I never devote time to finding new artists or even given my good ole stand-bys a listen. I mostly tune into NPR in hopes they will make sense of the chaotic news cycle. But on this trip I was armed with something that I have never had before -- proper car speakers.

In my last car, affectionately know as Miss Noxzema (or Noxie for short), had blown speakers that would buzz if a single decimal of bass was in the audio. It isn't until you lose the ability to have bass that you realize how much all music depends on it. :/ So my options were always NPR or James Taylor. Now I love James, don't get me wrong, but hours and hours and hours of James just gets old (As do the repeating news segments on NPR.) BUT on this trip, in my new car, I was free to explore the more soulful parts of my music collection -- Bob Dylan, Etta James, Miles Davis, Just Jack, Justice... mmm ... really anything that skewed from beach music was a relief.

I think that 7 hours of music was enough to pull me out of my dry spell. As soon as I got home I began searching for something new ... something jazzy ... something with some bass! I'm already excited about the musical experience during my next road trip.

internal nesting.

I start this new chapter of my life just like I started my last one -- moving boxes. As I sift through old letters, forgotten books and tattered clothing I am constantly reminded of the life I left behind to cross the Atlantic just six months ago. It's odd how easily things can be forgotten when you don't see them on a daily basis.

My summer has been consumed with finding places for things. Moving into a new house has given me the ongoing challenge at interior decoratioin -- where does this lamp belong? Does the bookshelf look better next to the bed or the closet? However, I have also been busy finding places in my life for things that I've let myself exclude. Familiar friends, spirituality, family and work were all things that I snuck onto the back burner while in London. As I come back to my life here, I admit that I am struggle to make these things a part of my daily routine again.

What is most interesting, is that part of me doesn't want to bring these things into the forefront of my life once again. Being in London gave me an opportunity to reinvent myself, or rather discover who I really might be. Instead of keeping up appearences and meeting expectations I had the freedom to be entirely who I wanted to be from moment to moment.

That is a freedom that will be hard to give up.

But then again, maybe I don't have to...