Safe & Comfortable?

Saturday, November 18 ~ Santa Fe, New Mexico

I'm in Santa Fe for the afternoon, sitting in the organic cafe at Body, jotting down (yet again) my preferences for a new home.

I've done this frequently over the past two years of travel and have learned that nonattachment is an integral part of the process: detachment from the criteria I'm setting out, detachment from all conventional definitions of home, and detachment from all expectations of outcome...including the one that has me trading full-time travel for any kind of home base right now.

It's not always easy to surrender to the highest direction, without even knowing what it is (another of those irritating Wisdom-Keeper precepts.) But I'm doing my best.

My list complete, I do one of those public school compare-and-contrast exercises, using Albuquerque (for which I have gained a renewed affection this week) as my model.

Pretty much everything checks off, which would be cool, except for that nagging sense that something isn't quite right. Something is off.

And then I hear two words that send a shiver of dread pulsing down my spine: safe and comfortable.

"Albuquerque," I hear, "is safe and comfortable."

Now, don't get me wrong. Those are admirable characteristics in many contexts. Are they admirable in this one? For me? Can I wedge them into my preference list?

Parts of me would like to think that two years on the road have earned me "safe and comfortable." Other parts don't see "safe and comfortable" as much of a reward.

In this moment, I don't know.

In this moment, I don't even know what to do or where to go after Thanksgiving on Thursday, let alone where I'm going to live (assuming that my traveling days are, indeed, drawing to an end).

In this moment, all I can do is surrender to the uncertainty -- all of it, even as it feels neither safe nor comfortable.