well, here I go again

How do geese know when to fly to the sun? Who tells them the seasons? How do we, humans know when it is time to move on? As with the migrant birds, so surely with us, there is a voice within if only we would listen to it, that tells us certainly when to go forth into the unknown.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

There's an old, blue wooden trunk in my grandmother's house, one of her grandmothers packed all her worldly possessions in it and came west on a prairie schooner, and now here I am doing pretty much the same thing. I'm packing up this morning and leaving in the afternoon, going to a state that I've never seen, where I don't know a soul, but I'm fairly used to that experience at this point in my life. Realized the other day that I was participating in this old mythic story, the Great American Roadtrip, our national tradition of pulling up and heading west to seek your fortune. I'm following old Route 66 most of the way, as it turns out. Heck, I've even got someone to feel lonesome over, though she's already far away as it is, and now I'm putting another 1,000 miles between us. My life is turning into a country-western song. Maybe one by Mary Chapin Carpenter:

Now some people say that you shouldn't tempt fate
And for them I would not disagree
But I never learned nothing from playing it safe
I say fate should not tempt me
I take my chances, I don't mind working without a net
I take my chances, I take my chances every chance I get

So all this is to say that I'll be gone for a while, getting settled, and I don't know what kind of internet access I'm going to have there, so this blog is all up in the air (I didn't get to write half the posts I wanted to before I left, dammit). But I'll let you know. I'll be back when I'm back. I've got about 400 bucks to live on until I find a job and get paid, so cross your fingers for me.