We now innterupt your regularly scheduled programming ...

Minny,

There are things I must say to you, say to you, say to you …

You called. I actually don’t mind that. Kind of like it, even. You called, and you said it wasn’t your place. Your place, like you were waiting on the rights to a homestead so you could build a cabin and set your feet on the floor. Your place, with a door and windows and a table and chairs; a physical thing, a structure. Your place.

Maya Angelou says, “People can only do what they know to do, not what they think they should know, not even what they think they say they know, they can only do what they know to do.” Minny, what do you know to do? Wait for your place, your place, your place? You could run. You could. I did it, and I didn’t know how, but I did it. Maya was wrong here. I hate saying that because she is perhaps my favorite poet of all time, but she was wrong in the sense I am talking about right now, to you.

You could run, run, run. The actual running, it isn’t that hard. Adrenaline, excitement, possibility, hope beyond hope: it makes you do things you do not know to do. You end up watching cornfields roll by beyond the window of a Greyhound bus before you are even aware of buying the ticket. Ticket to ride, ticket to ride; cash on a barrelhead. What’s hard is to stop running once you’ve started. Maybe that’s why you waited for it: for your place to come to you. Why you’re still waiting. Do you know, somehow, that you’ll never stop running? I know that too. About myself. I run in my sleep from dogs and hunters. Some days I pry apart this town from corner to corner like an old dollhouse and shake it so the pieces fall out, looking for somewhere else to direct my feet. What’s behind door number two in an endless hallway? Door three? Door four? We’d both like to know.

I do not blame you. Maybe I should, but I don’t. Blame is contingent upon surety of a favorable outcome. If I had known things would be better, if I had been 100 percent sure of a good thing coming out of you making yourself a place instead of waiting for one to come along and find you, then maybe I could blame you. But you held your tongue, and I am old enough to say that you had your reasons. Maybe Maya was right after all, and you were only doing what you know how to do. Maybe you have a misplaced sense of responsibility learned from someone else, who learned it from someone else, who learned it from someone else. Let the circle be unbroken.

But we can teach ourselves new things to know, and we can learn them from others if we listen, if we watch, if we ask. We can run, run, run. It’s not always bad. The same old place is a comfort because we know it inside, outside, sideways, backwards, forwards and upside-down, but in the end it’s still the same old place. The ones who dream of leaving and never move their feet are the ones who do not learn, not the ones who cannot learn. If you cannot learn, you never dream of leaving.

I’m not preaching. Really. I’m, not. Like I said: I don’t blame you. It isn’t my place to blame you; my place, my place, my place is not in bitterness anymore. I’m giving it up. Selling the claim. I feel homeless, naked, and small, but. But.

My place may come to me. Until then, I will go to it. Learn something new to know, Minny. Die learning the next town and the next house and the next corner if you must, if you can’t stop running, but learn something new to know. Hit the ground and run away, train. Go to your place. It may meet you on the tracks.