Texas Depression

For the most part, I love to travel. But there's a difference in travel by choice and travel by "executive order." I took up administrative slack at work so that "the organization" could manintain good face as a partner/member of an influential national arts network. My "pay" has been that I get to travel to the network meetings, which are required. Over the past two years I've travelled to: Los Angeles, where I got to visit an old gypsy travelling companion of days gone by and ride a roller coaster on the Santa Monica pier (thus inspiring her 30th bday boardwalk celebration a year later). New Orleans, a few months before Katrina, where I strolled down streets filled with childhood memories of summer pilgramages to visit my momma's family. Miami, in December, where I examined beached jelly fish up close, sipped coffee at tiny neighborhood Cuban bakeries and feasted on Haitian food washed down with real Mojitos.

And now.... a suburburban sprawl on the outskirts of Dallas. I have been homesick since a week before I left to come out here.

In my mind, I am at Mount Airy, surrounded by friends, crooked fiddle tunes and moonshine.

In my reality, I'm counting the hours until I arrive back home to Judy Branch.....