coming and going

Does love have a shelf life?  Do our feelings for people and places eventually expire?
How is it that we keep ourselves alive.  No, not breathing and eating, but alive. 

I could confess so many things here about how i stay alive.  and here, staying alive doesn't always mean what you would expect.  For example:  how my passion for surfing has waned.  how my desire for personal growth exceeded my desire to nurture a relationship with my lover.  how, somehow, i chose between graduate school and organic farming (school won).  how i suffered through real depression for many months of 2012, how training for (and ultimately running) a 1/2 marathon was the only thing that pulled me out of my tailspin.  in these relative shadows i was agonizing, but not dying. 

Ultimately i realized that in order for me to be alive (as opposed to breathing and eating) I need to shake it up, change things, continue to find new challenges.  I need to test the boundaries of love, to humble myself before loneliness, and throw myself into difficult pursuits. 

I am leaving tomorrow for San Francisco.  I have a new job in Marin.  I have Graduate school to attend at UCSF.  I have a home in Petaluma.  I have the following things packed, to take with me: 

one dog (not actually packed yet)
2 guitars
4 surfboards
1 bed
1 crate of journals
miscellaneous kitchen gadgets
an old set of cast iron pans
a newer set of german knives
clothes
a sewing machine
a handmade quilt
many pillows (you can't have too many)
watercolor paints/paper
books of poetry
books of pathophysiology
books of fiction
1 ipod
1 iphone
1 very small laptop computer
original framed artworks
7 houseplants
1 single-speed road bicycle
1 overactive mind
infinite memories

And on the way out I will cry.
(in this, I feel alive)