Who knows, really, what that phrase means anyway? But whatever it is, I think I’m entering it.
Yup. Today is the first day of my seventh year back here in Sarasota — and also the beginning of my seventh year of being in business for myself.
When I left Boston six years ago, I really didn’t have any idea what was ahead for me. I just knew that the city I’d loved — and the man I’d loved in it — had kind of beat the stuffing out of my heart. It was time to leave. With no expectations beyond surviving and carving out a little life for me and my cats, I arrived in Sarasota at the height of humidity and with the skies fraught with the maelstrom that would be Charley.
I slept on the floor that night; furniture not yet arrived from Boston (and wouldn’t show up for another two weeks). Einstein and Coco weary from their 30-something hour sojourn.
I bitch a lot about Sarasota — my hometown, really, and that of my family — but I’ve grown to love it, warts and winds and wackadoodles, all.
I still haven’t reconciled myself to the superficiality of what passes for relationships in this town, though; — god how I’d love to have a real conversation with someone that didn’t become something regretted or ignored or discounted later. Every now and then someone speaks something really real — but then they quickly withdraw and it — whatever that real thing was — is never mentioned again. And that continues to trouble me. Everyone in this town keeps everyone else at a considerable arm’s length. People dance around their emotions here. In my experience, nobody really says what they really think. It’s hard to get to the real person. If I ever leave it will be for this reason. Oh, and rising sea levels.
But, there are some genuinely lovely, nice people in this town, too. Men and women with whom I’ve shared drinks and walks and kisses — I just wish I could say I knew any of them better. What makes their hearts beat. What makes their hearts skip a beat. What their fears are; what made them fall in love and what makes them think they’re falling out of love. What makes them feel as if they’re breaking into a million little pieces and how they somehow pick all those pieces up again and get back in the game. I know they do it. They just don’t talk about it.
Want to know what makes my million little pieces stick together? I went on a drive over the weekend and captured just a few of the parts of Sarasota that have become my heart’s glue. I think this is going to be my best year yet.
