I will dare.

I started thinking about writing in my blog again, maybe because I'm on the verge of doing something again. The next big thing, or something like that. What if the next big thing is to go back to the exact place where I started? It's sort of novel, this idea, actually. Because somehow, in the past 3.5 years, *normalcy has become novel to me. Novel enough, in fact, that I crave it, that I covet it, that I maybe even dream about it.

So I started thinking about writing in my blog again, because that's what one does, these days, when one undertakes something of note. I started a blog when I moved to California. I continued writing in the blog when I moved away from California to Louisiana, and I continued writing in the blog, on a somewhat regular basis, beyond that first year, and even into my second year in Loozianne. At some point I acknowledged the futility of trying to maintain an online journal during a period when my online access was spotty at best, and restricted my writing to a private blog when I was able, but more commonly to the draft folder of my computer's email client.

But here I am again, writing a new entry in my blog. Not because my circumstances have changed, per se, but maybe because I'm willing them to. There's been an internal struggle raging within since the moment I set foot in Louisiana. It's followed a few different paths, but its serpentine course seems to lead to the one place I've spent the better part of the past 15 years trying to get away from... home.

Funny to think about, the idea of life as a river. I spent a semester abroad, studying in the south of France. My roommate, Katrin, was from Hamburg, Germany. After the semester concluded, I traveled a bit, including a quick sojourn to visit Katrin in her hometown. While I was there, we spent a night lounging on the couch, watching movies with her boyfriend. We had chosen a popular movie of the moment, Fargo. During the course of the conversation that followed the viewing, two facts became clear: first, that Minnesotans do actually have a very thick accent (Following the movie, Katrin asked if Minnesotans actually spoke as they had in the movie. I responded in the affirmative, though acknowledging the movie had gone a bit overboard. Katrin's relief was evident, and she explained that she'd thought, when the Minnesotans would respond "Oh, yah," that we had been making fun of the German accent); second, that it's not common knowledge that, to quote a favorite Indigo Girls song of my college days, "The Mississippi's mighty/ It starts in Minnesota/ At a place that you could walk across with 5 steps down."

And so the course of life leads me back to Minnesota, or at least, I'm willing it to. I've lived so many places, and worked so many jobs, but there really is something to the idea of home being where the heart is. For all the technology available, for all the ease of access to email/ phone/ video/ social networking, at the end of the day, it's so lovely, and sort of irreplaceable, to simply be in the physical presence of those you love.