“Path is only a name for a place where you find yourself. Where you’re going on it is only a story.”
- from Engine Summer, by John Crowley

The first thing that this trip has done so far is to remind me that you can’t go back, not really. (I know that already, but sometimes I forget.) Ithaca is still here, seemingly unchanged - only the faces are different, less-recognizable, as a new crop of students starts to come through. But I have changed a lot, I think, already in these few months.

Ithaca is a great place. It’s absolutely beautiful, and full of good-hearted people doing interesting things. I still don’t understand why I wasn’t happier here. (I can say that now. I couldn’t before, when I still lived here.) On the surface, it would seem that this is an ideal place for me - that’s what I kept expecting, too. But being here in person reminds me of the flipside of that, of an underlying strangeness and unease that I think I’ve always felt here, even when I did call this place home. As if I always had to pretend that I belonged here; as if I never quite really found my niche.

Of course, you could blame that on a lot of external circumstances - leaving home at 18 and going into essentially a foreign culture, and then one relationship wreck after another, compounded by stress and a crazy workload. But my instinct says that it’s something more than that, something deeper. There’s something about Ithaca itself that is just strange to me, these days.

At any rate, this is definitely not my home. Not anymore. Which means, I guess, that Philadelphia is. I was reminded of the phrase “home is where you hang your hat” the other day, and I’m drawn to that idea. I want home to be where I am on this Earth. As long as the ground supports me and the air feeds me with oxygen and the Sun gives light, then I’ll know that I’m at home.

It’s also weird to be able to go back just like this, on a whim, to visit. I’ve never lived in a place where I could go back easily before; my moves tend to be more irrevocable. (Heck, even this time I wanted to move to Colorado, because Pennsylvania felt like too much of a repetition.)

I guess there are moments of joy and connection everywhere, both in places I’ve been already and in those that I haven’t. My path is drawn on my feet, I have only to follow it; and my story is told with every step that I take.