Vacate

     Everything is up in the air.

     It all started a month ago, the Friday afternoon before vacation, when my office phone rang. I glanced down at the screen and my stomach hit the floor.

     The last time he called, another Friday before vacation, it was a big crisis, vacation be damned, which it turned out to be, along with doomed and destroyed and other bad things that don't happen to start with "d," so it was with quite a bit of trepidation that I picked up the receiver, mentally rehearsing my new and improved vacation speech, steeling myself to defend my vacation to the death, or at least to the point where it wouldn't have permanent repercussions on my current and future ability to win the bread and carry the bacon to my dwelling.

     He was nervous, hemming and hawing, unusual behavior from such an über alpha male.  Just as I wondered what's the point of this, he paused, said "let me get to the point," then made me an offer I could refuse.  An offer that will completely change my working life, and much of the rest of my life as well.  Whether or not I refuse.

     Head spinning, I begged for time, hoping I'd soon settle back into mentat mode.

     I haven't.  My head's now spinning even faster, if that's possible.  My wife pointed out that I don't have two choices, I have numerous choices:   "If you're going to make a move, why not explore all your alternatives?"  Sage advice, sure, but not advice calculated to calm one's inner turbulence.  We always have choices, but most days we ignore them, keeping our head down, doing what we always do, comfortably enveloped in our routine.  Then an outside agency, such as an über alpha male, steps in and disrupts our routine and forces us to stop, look up, contemplate something new and compare it with what we already have and evaluate the various ramifications of staying or changing and then we contemplate other choices and compare them with each other and so on and so on and pretty soon that world of endless possibilities opens up before our eyes and we curl up in a fetal position on the floor of a darkened room rocking back and forth as we squeeze our eyes shut, willing those choices away.

     My head still swirling, two weeks ago I managed to get up off the floor and fly to a foreign city to do the urban tourist thing and now I'm seriously totally completely head-over-heels in love.  With the city.  Not as in "I really liked it there, I hope to visit it again one day," no, what I'm experiencing is the sort of obsessive love that drives one to spend hours browsing local real estate listings, to investigate permanent residency requirements, to check online job sites, to mentally convert my 401(k) funds into the foreign currency, to attempt to comprehend what it would be like to start all over again in a foreign land and knowing I can't even begin to approach an understanding but not, in the end, caring all that much.

     Sure, it may turn out to be puppy love, or temporary insanity, most likely a mixture of both, but for now I'm taking it very seriously.  Something is happening here.  That über alpha male set it in motion and I'm powerless to stop it.  Sitting in this beautiful foreign city, surrounded by the greener grass, my career and now my home mere bullet points on issues lists, I tilt my head back and see everything up in the air, exactly where it's always been, but something I couldn't appreciate while my head was buried deep in routine.

     And now as my mind wanders places it's never wandered before, it hits me:  I may never find my way back.

Comments

[DarkoV]

Wow!
This is exciting. Loving a person is one thing. But, a city, and one that may "never let you find your way back". That is one sultry attention-heavy metropolis. The best of luck on your upcoming mental journey as you meander to Decisionville.

[R J Keefe]

If this isn't the ultimate back-to-school announcement, I don't know what is. Wow.

[stephenesque.org]

You went to Innsbruck? I knew this would happen.

[Waterhot]

So that explains the protracted silence.

This happened to me ten years ago. I moved to the city I fell in love with. Two weeks later my wife left me. Four years later I left the city with the girl I had met and fallen in love with there with a passion I had never known. We went back to my home town. A few months later she left me. Less than two years later I returned to the city I had fallen in love with, the city where we had met. I'm still here.

We may leave cities, but they don't, as a general rule leave us.

Only you know if the crush is just that or something more. But if it's more - go with it.

[shank]

I fell in love with a city once.
But that was before I knew it had herpes. Whore.

[Ex-pat in Oz]

Oh, God-- do it---

escape the self-obsessed "i live in a gated community, my house is worth 3x more than i paid for it, me a comfortable management-level guy, blah blah blah"

fuck it-- tossed all that shit out the window 5 years ago--went to sydney-- and me and family have never regretted it...

stretch man stretch-- you're in the groud long time