Ode to Transition

So here I am again. Ready to uproot. There is a theory about people who went to my college, Antioch College (which is closing by the way) that we never stop co-opping. Antioch is/was a co-op school which meant, when I was there anyway, you spent 6 months of the year on-campus, regular college studying, experimenting with sex and drugs and photography courses- and the other 6 months in the real world working and writing about it to get credit. It was a great school for me. I don't think I could've hacked a standard school situation but doing experiential stuff was right up my alley. I had something like 8 different co-ops, all of them tremendous and all of them gave me a chance to try out what I thought I wanted to do.... it led me into education in a real practical way. I got to live in the New Hampshire woods and play with kids, wash dishes in San Francisco, cook for Quakers in Boston, scientists in the Sierra Nevadas, do education programs in museums in Chicago and Staten Island, chaperone an alternative school trip from Michigan to Arkansas..... and get credit, paid and gain this insatiable lust for travel and newness.

And so here I am, 16 years after I graduated still co-oping.... Technically I say I've been in Chicago for ten years, and it's true, I do keep coming back. But in the meantime I've managed to also live in four different countries and get a master's degree in another state. But this city has seen me through living in 9 different neighborhoods, 2 major relationships (including almost getting married), living alone, living with a huuuge variety of roomates, having at least 10 different jobs, teaching in at least 14 of the Chicago Public Schools, grooving on a butt-load of dance floors, being in the same capoeira group for the duration, drinking hundreds of beers and clocking thousands of miles on my trusty bike. But for all this time I haven't been near my family. My social and work network here is humongous and that's pretty much why I've stayed this whole time. Aside from the fact that I love this city,

IT ACTUALLY SMELLS LIKE CHOCOLATE WHERE I LIVE

- who the hell can say that? (aside from my neighbors of course, we live near an honest to god chocolate factory) - it's time to go. I'm scared and jobless and looking at rents on craigslist made me shiver a bit, but it feels right. I was offered this amazing job here in Chicago, good salary, good neighborhood, an apt. opened up in the same 'hood so I could really do the community building I want to do... but something was nagging at me, and when I listened to it it sounded a little like homesick and a little like no one is getting any younger and if you want to commit to a place and a job and be there forever maybe you should be near family... Being in Costa Rica and Cuba this summer and seeing how tight-knit folks were, how family is valued on a daily basis made me want to reorganize what I thought of community. I am sad to leave what I have here, but I want to build one with my real family as well as my adopted one... so I have my last hurrah with the city of neighborhoods, a big dirty lake and all of these people I run into walking down the street that I know and start over from scratch- but a scratch that has all the support and love in the world.

Here I go, here I go, here I go again!