migration nom constant 070311 ... kerry when i was about 23 i packed two suitcases and moved from atlanta to california, to the bay area. i was working at a diner in the morning and serving pizza at night, riding the creaky red schwinn bike my dad gave to my mom in the 80s, but she rode it maybe twice. since college i couldn’t get a museum or gallery job, only interviews that seemed promising but ended up going nowhere. i was living with my boyfriend at the time in a 1920s studio apartment growing tomatoes on our balcony and we loved each other but it in a forever kind of way. more a right now, then a habitual kind of way. we were really young. we drank a lot and did plenty of drugs and had big parties and put the garden stakes in upside down at first. i made a lot of soda bread in that kitchen. one night, months before i moved, i went to the righteous room with olivia. the walls there are painted the color of old blood. giant crude paintings hang on the walls, and the music is always so loud and there is, or used to be, a cigarette machine in the back. that’s the south for you, at least the one i used to know. bars open until 4am and ashtrays on every table. she nursed her beer. we’d worked at the college gallery together, was how i got to know her, though i was aware of her because at such a tiny women’s college you know nearly everyone at least by sight. she said at first i’d intimidated her, that it seemed like i didn’t need any new friends, had my shit figured out, which confused me because i felt so lonely so much of the time and have never truly had my shit figured out. i had seen olivia and her posse of rowdy artists and dancers around campus and thought if only i hadn’t transferred in… they look like they could be my tribe… yelling over the music to be heard she told me she was going to move to berkeley, sleep on her aunt’s couch and figure it out from there. that was the only concrete part of the plan. she said she didn’t know anyone out there and sorry to rub salt in the wound but hadn’t i been so bummed about not getting that assistant curator job, there’s so many museums in the bay, more opportunities, wasn’t i always saying i wanted to get out? she said i should just come out to the bay and i said that sounds fantastic, said it in the way that i’d say winning the lottery would be “fantastic,” or the end of capitalism would be “fantastic,” and she told me she was serious. she said she knew i thought she was kidding but she was leaving soon and to let her know when i wanted a place to crash. she said anytime, it didn’t matter, call her. she said isn’t your friend ellen going out there too, let’s form a little community. you’d like each other, i admitted. when we worked together at the college gallery she was always directing and pointing and she clearly belonged there. she had me do the lights for the show because i’d learned how over the summer. i remember looking down at her from the top of a tall ladder where i was arranging the track lighting, tilting and twisting lamps, sweating a bit. she was looking up at me with a huge grin on her face. a couple of months later i asked my dad to help me dig up those old suitcases, the beat-up roller bags with the little rips and tears and the blank red baggage tag. i said i just need two, just two and i’m set. perhaps, most likely, more to come. 210919 ... kerry (swap garden stakes for tomato cages) 210919 ... unhinged the statewide history essay contest junior year of high school. i wrote my first migration paper on the migration of jazz. but as the deadline for the contest loomed, my teacher asked all of us to write a second paper so i chose the mormon migration because by then i realized quite a few of my friends at my second high school were mormon and i was curious because all i really knew about it was my parents thought mormons were weird and that they used to practice polygamy. my favorite snippet of research for the second paper was how the book of mormon came about. that an angel came down to the founder and told him where the tablets were buried but also that he needed a set of golden magic spectacles to translate the tablets. even back then, i thought 'wow sounds like that guy was tripping or something'. the mormons got chased out of everywhere they went, mostly because of the polygamy, including northeast OH (where i grew up) which was the first stop on the their migration that eventually led them to the territory that became the state of utah after they pretended to get rid of the polygamy piece. crows have diurnal migrations from their communal roosting spots for unmated juveniles (big murders of crows are comprised of unmated juveniles; once crows find a mate they are basically monogamous and mostly solitary). the migrations are triggered by the rising and the setting of the sun. i currently leave the house for work right after sunrise and see the morning migration as i wait for the bus. sometimes a single crow gets separated from its friends and sits in a tree and gives out some melancholy and borderline frantic caws like 'hey guys! where'd you go?!' 210919 what's it to you? who go blather from