What pisses me off

You can burn an American flag, and that's OK. That's your freedom of speech on flaming, moronic display there.

You can dunk a cross in a jar of urine, and that's OK. That's art, and it's your freedom of artistic expression.

You can rip a Bible to shreds in front of an audience, and that's OK. Again, your freedom of speech, and who cares if you offend a few million narrow-minded Christians.

But you can't burn a Quran. You can't even threaten to do it. Think of all the people you'd offend.

I wouldn't burn anything in protest - a bra, a flag, a book of any kind.

And I'm not OK with willfully endangering American troops.

But a person is only responsible for their own actions - not for the reactions of others, whether across the street or around the world.

And if you're going to defend people's freedoms of religion, speech and expression, you'd better be across the effing board with it.

Otherwise, you're simply a hypocrite. A filthy, lying hypocrite.

'Anne' as a mirror ...

I'm near the end of "Anne of Green Gables" (the book) a year after Amber, Rachel and I made the PEI pilgrimage, a year after we listened to the book on CD up through Maine and New Brunswick, over the Confederation Bridge and on into Charlottetown. I dozed a lot during that mostly-middle-of-the-night trek, so I missed a lot of the story (again).

I read it as a kid; I read it again in college. But somehow, so much of the profundity slipped away. I've found that common with a lot of books I loved (or ought to have loved) as an adolescent: They may have been amusing then, but they actually mean something now. How odd.

Anyway. Where I am: Anne regrets not forgiving Gilbert (or telling him she had forgiven him), and her regret is haunting her through her term at Queen's Academy.

I can't say I actually regret not re-establishing contact, but there's somthing — or several somethings — nagging at me. I just can't put my finger on it. I had a dream last night: We were, at the very least, friends who were glad to see each other and to catch each other up on the goings-on in our lives.

Some days, I wish it could be like that. Other days ... Well. Other days, I'm moving away, and I tell myself that beyond the moment when I shut the door on the moving van and head outside the city limits for the last time, it just won't matter anymore.

Maybe I'm wrong.

But I'll be wrong hundreds of miles away. So you see — it really won't matter.

What I'll miss

♦ The scent of sagebrush in the air.

♦ The many, many clear nights when I could step out to the park a few blocks away and marvel at a star-strewn velevet-black sky.

♦ Amanda at The Alibi and the fact that she would hand-squeeze lemons for our Saturday night vodka sours. Bless her.

♦ The fact that it was 99 percent safe to run outside late at night, and that the 1 percent of danger came not from rapists and murderers, but from porcupines and foxes.

♦ The sight of the Snowies.

♦ The four-hour drive home.

♦ Erin, Robert, Joe, Josh, Justin, Sholty, Angela, Christa, Rachel, Cindy, the crew at SREFC and most of the Boomerang staff.

♦ My huge, huge, HUGE closet in my rather spacious apartment. And my kitchen table/storage surface/filing space.

♦ My sweet next-door neighbors and their kids.

♦ Late-night chats, sandwiches, coffee, etc. with other crazy Laramie insomniacs at their offices, in the park, at their homes ...

♦ Night Herron Books, Nu2U, Altitude, Coal Creek, Jimmy John's (they don't have one where I'm going ... sad), Fat Burrito, the Front Street Tavern, the martinis at Tommy Jack's, the cherry chicken salad sandwich at Jeffrey's, the Thai Pie and the spinach turkey cranberry salad at Grand Avenue Pizza ...

There are a lot of things I WON'T miss. At all. But it might be considered ungracious to list any of them here.

I'll just say that there still haven't been any regrets over my decision to leave, that I'm super-excited about where I'm going, what I'll be doing, what I'll be near and the life I hope I'll have after I've left Wyoming. It's time. It's definitely time.

(expanded ♦ edited)

Going through planners/journals from 2006-2008. Three books of joy, anger, celebration, sorrow, anxiety, gratitude & toughening up ...

Examples: Dad's heart attack, brother's trip to the ER after his dog bit him and infected his tendon, freezing cold camping trip with a best bud, engagements, weddings, anniversary parties, the beginnings of relationships, the endings of relationships, relationships that went on far longer and more painfully than they should have, mono, fainting, vacations, tornadoes ... Three years can hold a lot of life.