There's No Place Like Home...!
When I reached out to you last, in early June, I had just set off from Portland on an open-ended road odyssey that I was characterizing as my “Fool’s Journey.” My Fool’s journey because when the archetypal Fools reach the end of their known world, as represented by a cliff, they willingly step off into the unknown and unknowable…into the void.
That was the same kind of leap of faith I took five months ago when circumstances (mostly financial) pushed me and Kyri out onto the road with all I owned jammed into the back of my Prius.
My plan had been to keep you updated with regular blog posts; it never worked out that way. Spending most days behind the wheel of my car as I did, I rarely had the time or energy, come evening, to do much more than throw a post up on Facebook a few times a week.
Between May 28 when I left Portland to August 28 when I landed in Sedona, I traveled from the Pacific to the Mississippi, passing through more than a dozen states — some, like California, Nevada and Oregon, multiple times. It was an emotionally and financially challenging three months: Rarely did I know where I was going (or going to sleep) from one day to the next or how I would pay for it. Nor did I know how long my journeying would last or where it would drop me.
So imagine my astonishment when, after three months, I arrived in Sedona. Imagine my greater astonishment when, after a few days, I felt called to stay…indefinitely.
It felt like the ultimate Groundhog Day experience: 22 years ago, I arrived in Sedona after a similar three-month road odyssey, also never planning to stay…and also with a canine companion.
“I expected this to be another whistle stop on the road to wherever,” I wrote in The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write. “Instead, one week grew to two, one month to seven.” Before I knew it, Sedona was home…my first US home.
Eight weeks into this Sedona sojourn, my third, it again feels like home…
A selection of my books has found its way into the local bookstore (The Literate Lizard), which is also the site of my new series of weekly writing classes (I’ll be offering my fifth this Sunday (10/20) — Organic Screenwriting: Writing for Film, Naturally);
I have a growing roster of local coaching clients; I’m planning a full-day Sedona workshop for next month (Birthing Your Book…Even If You Don’t Know What It’s About), and I’m using Sedona as a home base as I expand my outreach beyond the city limits: For example, I’m launching a weekly online Ask the Writing Coach Q&A series starting this Sunday (more about that below).
And although I still don’t have a permanent home of my own here, housing keep showing up in amazingly miraculous ways. I’m halfway through my third accommodation miracle right now, and I’m trusting that a fourth will show up by October 31, when I will need to to leave my current situation.
Nothing is certain and nothing is fixed. In any moment, the tectonic plates of our lives can shift, propelling us in a dramatically different direction than the one we had planned for and expected. That’s what happened to get me to Sedona the first time back in 1997, again in 2002 and now, for the third time, in 2019. So I cannot state with certainty that I’m here “for good.” However, I am here for my good and I’m grateful that the red rocks called me back.
A couple of weeks ago, the woman I’m renting from shared with me that she was thinking of returning to Canada (how ironic that I end up renting from a Canadian!): She is 80, has no health insurance and is beginning to feel concerned about the future…even as she’s not eager to leave.
“Sedona is my heart home,” she said to me wistfully, and in that moment I realized that it is mine, too. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I get to stay. It does mean that I will relish every moment I have here and will continue to be grateful for all the miracles that this magical place is blessing me with!
Warmly,
Mark David
P.S. If you find yourself in Sedona, I hope you'll look me up and check out one of my events. Regardless, don't forget to Ask the Writing Coach, every Sunday at 9pm ET!