{painting the town}

I feel like the longer I live in this city and the more I walk the streets, the more strange and fascinating and unfamiliar it becomes to me. Every time I tilt my head back, I see something new, something I hadn't noticed the last time I was here. Even the things that I recognize are somehow surprising and new each time I pass by. In the years before I moved here, I didn't like to stay in one place for too long. I felt like a place got stagnant within a few months, the ripples around my feet disappeared too quickly; routine, to me, felt more like a straitjacket than a bathrobe. Not comfortable, not reassuring, but constricting and confining and ugly. I wanted to meet new people, walk around new neighbourhoods, learn new things. In fact, I was on my fourth move of the year and on my way to England when I met Barclay.

It might have just been a clever ploy on his part to make me stay in the city, in the country, but somehow he convinced me that putting down roots could be a good thing. My "short stay" with a friend turned into buying a house and getting married--the two most permanent things I'd done since that time I fell off a balcony in high school and chipped my front tooth. And--surprise!--it's good. It's so good. I don't think I was made to float around the world like a captain-less ship. I think I was made for community and discipline and roots and deeper relationships, the kind that come with time, and even routine {which, clearly, has reached bathrobe status with me}.

But the point is not that. The point is that when you put down roots, you don't need to sacrifice your curiosity.

You just need to learn to look at the world differently. I've learned that I don't need to be in a new place to see new things; I just need to open my eyes wider. When the ripples die down, I need to kick my feet a little. I've learned that it takes a long time to know a place completely. That you could spend hours and days and months and years and lifetimes in the same place and never know it entirely. {And that the same is true of people.} I've learned that it's good for your creativity, not limiting, to stick with something for a while. You're almost always forced to go deeper, to figure it out more thoroughly. You just have to get past your short attention span.