People are asking about you, he texted.

Even important people. It's sad, he said.

I said, So if I die, people would notice? That's always nice to know. Then I said, I'm right here. I've been here this whole time. Orange County isn't very far. And what important people?

You can be here physically without being emotionally present, he said. And when you check out emotionally, the next thing we know, you're packing your bags to leave Los Angeles.

I'll be in LA for at least another week, I said. And Palm Springs is only two hours away. You can come visit.

He exclaimed, What?! See??

And because I wasn't in the mood to rant about being boxed into a formula — and because he was partly right — I sent my friend a few happy emoticons and promised him a conversation.

*

When I left Los Angeles for New York in 2008, I left to patch the holes I'd identified in my self. My patience for sunshine and mainstream people was wearing thin.

I needed to indulge my cravings for pretentious conversation on poesy. I didn't want to read books and watch films. I wanted to discuss them. I wanted people who could turn pages as though they were undressing a lover — memorizing every line, delighting in every scar, every pause.

I wanted a life of elevators and strangers who'd say, at 1AM, "I'm not tired." Strangers who would expect me to reply, "Then let's go do something." Strangers who would then turn into lifelong friends.

Two years later, I'd stored up enough talk of aesthetics and obscure music to return to the dry heat and its silkier ocean. I suddenly felt a sharp imbalance in my self again. This time, I hungered for spiritual fulfillment. A beauty that transcends color and syllable.

I had loved skirting through and through hoards of New Yorkers. But now I wanted to be alone. Alone with a thousand good angels and the Spirit, if he would have me.

My friends in Los Angeles are like family. They are the people I can pray with. But they can only meet a specific portion of my needs. Sometimes, I'm afraid this hurts them. They don't understand why I always run off to hunt for my own adventures.

My family-friends and I have vastly different artistic interests. We don't love the same books. We don't love the same films. We don't love the same music. When I sat alone in the second row as Mark Z. Danielewski performed The Fifty-Year Sword in downtown Los Angeles, I ran a mental list of the people in New York who would've loved to have been there.

I sometimes grow weary of making unfiltered comments out loud around my Los Angeles friends only to have them shoot me funny looks and say, "Oh, you artist, you." I once gave a very private copy of my manuscript to one of my best friends and she said she could only read it in small doses.

But there were so many times in New York when I'd sit and pray on a giant rock in Central Park and would wish I had someone to pray with.

The people I love understand that they only see a limited facet of my personality. I love to talk books. But I also love people who can talk my ear off about astrophysics. I love poems written by both Jeffrey McDaniel and King David.

I don't think art needs to be didactic or "spiritual." I love art that delivers simply for art's sake. I can enjoy something visually even if it claims to have no meaning. But I also value and need art that can break my heart and sink me to my knees.

I've had conversations with my New York friends that I could never have with my Los Angeles friends. And vice versa.

*

You see him so often, one friend said.

That's because he's here. Before he came to visit this month, we didn't see each other for four weeks, I said.

'Four weeks' surprised her. The mister just spent two and a half weeks with me, and I know that some of my friends fear I've become 'that girl' who abandons the people she loves because she's found a man. 

D and I try to spend good chunks of our time together hanging out with other people. Though yes, when I see him, I want to see lots of him. But it's not just because he's my 'boyfriend.'

It's because I finally found a friend who understands and loves every aspect of who I am. I can be the most myself around him and not feel foreign.

When we walked into the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, one of the presenters pointed to her moving graphics — a visual piece full of lines and blocks of color. The presenter motioned toward her artist and said, "We've got our very own Picasso." As we walked past her display, I muttered to myself, "Looks more like a Mondrian," and D caught what I said and agreed.

Details like that tiny moment are what matter.

Details like him downloading both Vladimir Nabokov and Watchman Nee for our Kindles.

Just as I was meeting more people who could understand me wholly, I left New York. Was there a purpose? Yes. Do I feel that purpose coming to an end? Honestly, yes.

I can't create as well in Los Angeles. I never could. I feel emotionally stifled here. Stifled by expectations, anxieties and rules. Too many people here care and worry about me. And their thoughts and questions and boxed-in ideas of me seep into my writing, and I'm less able to write freely. It might sound crazy to some of you. But others of you understand exactly exactly exactly what I mean.

That's only one reason I'm leaving.

Whenever an urge beckons me to leave a place, I am questioned. I love the questioning. Sometimes, the questions make me rethink and stay. But if I'm meant to leave, the questions only propel me further away.

So here:

I'm relocating to Palm Springs for a bit. Then spending about a month or two in New York for a variety of reasons. Then going back to Palm Springs until I know what literary organization — if any — will take me in the fall.

And if none take me, then chances are good that I'm moving back to New York (or to Taiwan or Argentina or Fiji — really — depending on a slew of circumstances).

I'm thrilled to see what gorgeous words will fall from all this physical instability. I love shaking things up and watching the cracks snake through my walls.

"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." — Leonard Cohen.