Tour de Murvul

I've been riding my bike around town. On the one hand, I love that I can do this, ride through all my old stomping grounds. On the other, the nostalgia I feel, the longing for the way things used to be, makes the ride a bit of an emotional roller coaster.

And surreal. It is such a strange mix of old and new, of some things being exactly like they were, exactly where they were, 45 years ago, and other things being juxtaposed onto the landscape, replacing or displacing. It's very disorienting. As much time as I've spent here over the past 31 years, it's an aspect I can never quite get used to. It's weird to be standing someplace and know something's different and yet not be able to quite put my finger on it. Or to look at some new development and be completely unable to recall what the area used to look like. That makes me feel guilty, like I'm somehow betraying the memory of my hometown, or like I didn't care enough to memorize every square inch.

And the traffic. Holy smokes! It is, perhaps, the traffic that I am fighting the hardest to accept. The other night, about 9:30, I was driving home from Sissy's. Mind you, she lives out in the country, a good fifteen minutes from downtown. Once upon a time, maybe 5 cars would have passed me at that time of night. This night? 40-50. And this wasn't just as I got closer to the college and town. The stream of cars started passing me when I was still out near her house. I was flabbergasted.

I fight these changes so much. What happened to the Murvul I grew up in?

It's ridiculous, I know. Because let's be honest, if the Murvul I grew up in was so great, why did I leave? And this Murvul is so much more user friendly in terms of being LBGTQ and/or a person of color, in terms of open-mindedness. I mean, a transgender remembrance candlelight vigil in front of the courthouse? A lesbian minister of the UU Church with a wife and adopted child? Banning the display of the Confederate flag on campus?

Radical changes.

It is really hard to "go with the flow," to not put change into categories of good or bad. Change brings, well, changes. They go hand-in-hand. So, I am working on accepting the "good" along with the "bad," trying to simply appreciate the dynamic nature of life, and allow myself to be One with the Universe, the great, big, ever-changing Universe. Things feel better when I do.