Memphis, Tennessee 

Summer 2011: Our roadtrip to Memphis was relaxing and great fun. I love the slow, dreamy drive through Mississippi before you cross the Tennessee state line. The truckloads of watermelons for sale ($1 each)! the beautiful homes and rural decay that dot the highway 72 landscape makes me happy for the experience of living here. There, I said it.

I may not feel entirely at home, but lately I feel at peace. We’ve just had three days of severe afternoon rainstorms, which hasn’t bothered me, it's just life, going on. I no longer feel utterly lost, not knowing what the fuck I was doing in life's every category of living.

So, here’s one thing: on the whole, lately -- I’ve just been happy. Not the young, high-energy kind of happy, but the quiet kind, the kind that soothes and calms and contemplates and doesn’t have a lot to say among the farm fields and cotton gins and the river and the trees.