the storm is coming

The other night I was coming home from playing softball and the sky was exploding behind the mountains, the clouds and Space Needle swathed in purple and gold, and I said to the man pushing the shopping carts in the Safeway parking lot, "On a night like this, how could anyone doubt the existence of God?"

He stopped for a second and we both stood watching the stars struggle into the twilight.

When I got home I had a letter from Ruby and DJ Riz on the radio. Strawberries tasted like fine wine. I dreamed about Orcas.

I'm getting rid of three-quarters of what I own and moving onto a boat in two weeks. In 1994, Jon Rodgers wrote to me: "You'd be amazed how little you really need to live." In 2005, I'm realizing he's still right.

Last weekend on the boat I sat in the clean space, the shiny hardwood floor, the huge windows bursting with early sunshine. It's so easy. I'm extricating myself from the strange mess of flowers that has become my world. All my life I've had my Backpack & a Bagel theory. That all I really needed to live was a backpack and a bagel. In the backpack: a notebook, a camera and a walkman. I used to walk the streets for hours with no place to be, taking pictures, writing stories, breathing in the city.

Last weekend I wrote, "Welcome to my boat. We're here, Saturday night, eating frozen dinners and listening to NPR. I can hear pondfrogs and traffic. I hope life will always be this easy."

It can be.

Eisuke and I wore polartec scarves and had acid-rain snowball fights at the Charles River, blowing bubbles in the winter air so they froze and spun on the almost-white like tiny kaleidoscope globes. He had purple hair and I had a frog backpack that my ferret Pez slept in. We wandered the streets, we drank pink champagne from the bottle to celebrate a sunny Tuesday afternoon, shooting the plastic cork across Beacon St. to the frat house balcony.

The Boy left a haiku on his bike for me because he knew I'd try to put flowers there. I look at his flies through the microscope and he tells me they sing for each other, and dance and box, and I ask if that's why they're studied like humans. Because singing and dancing and boxing are essential.

Jared's roommate always wore sunglasses as if the world was too bright for him. He could recite Pi to 34 digits. Harry looks like Jared but he has twin cats and a vicious stutter. He could sing to those cats so plainly.

Bee moved to Louisville to follow his heart. Daniel moved to Austin to follow his dreams. My friends set a good example.

And there was a paisley hardbound notebook stained with espresso and it was enough. And there were bagel Sundays in a rainy window and those were enough. And yesterday morning as I'm standing there on the curb of Broadway waiting for the Northbound bus in the sunshine, Charlie Post sings to me: Everything's Coming Up Daisies.

There was the paisley book and flowers in my hair. And there were up-all-night sunrises and jumping the fence to the reservoir, and cold concrete, salmon sunsets, open mic nights, coffee... always coffee. Soft cover novels and CDs shoved into backpacks. And walking. Just to get out, just to feel alive. Walking.

Tonight is the night I go in my mind to Jaymiles' apartment. Or I go see Jon play at Dakota J's. Or Eisuke and I take on the Back Bay. It is a night for cray-pas and dirty hands and listening to Los Halos at the kitchen table. Being a little bit crazy, a little bit irreverent.

I called VVB in a panic of losing control over my little corner of the world, of things not going how I think they Should Go, of the universe ignoring my little pleas and selfish indulgences and she said, "Kristin. If you're supposed to be on the boat, you'll be on the freakin boat."

And I'm on the boat.