Catherine Addington:

I am in Barcelona when it’s summer and in London when it rains and in New York when it snows and in Argentina when it blooms and in Virginia when it swelters. I am in Barcelona when I dream and in London when I explore and in New York when I achieve and in Argentina when I love and in Virginia when I write. I am in many more places, many times of day. I have only the one life.

Tomorrow is my last day in my hometown. That’s an impossible and unnecessary sense of finality, I know. I’ll always visit. I’ll always be from here. This is my country. But hometowns are incubators for my generation, at least in cities like mine where the rent is rising. We know they are not ours. This is the benefit of being from an old place; it is impossible to get illusions about ownership rather than stewardship.

I expected to feel a lot more than I do. It’s always like this. A lot of nerves, a bit of quiet dread, but no epic sadness. (Yet.) I’ve taken Alexandria with me all over God’s green earth and I do not expect it to be any harder to take it with me an hour south. I am always here. I always have been.

Beautifully written. Maybe it’s that I’m not much of a traveler, or maybe it’s that I have lived in pretty “new” places, but rather than being “always here” when I’m away from my home place I only feel the lack of it. I experience each place I live much more as a singular entity, with a flavor and texture utterly distinct from everywhere else I have been.