Change is good, right?

Well, change is the one thing you can't get away from, anyway, so best just lay back and enjoy, yes?

Talking with Katie the other night, and we agreed that it was difficult to talk about the tour with friends back home. On the road, your social circle has collapsed down to seven other people, a veritable black hole of gossip and everybody knowing everybody else's business from which no privacy can escape. This can be challenging for those with strong boundaries. For those of us who seem to thrive on excessive closeness, however, there's actually a certain comfort level in it.

But that's not what makes it difficult to talk about the tour. You've gone through the day, you're scraped up, exhausted, nerves are shot, you've been eating road food so in all likelyhood you're either nauseated, gassy, or some combination thereof, you just want to completely shut down your brain and relax, you call your friends and family at home and they're at the bar (you know the bar, the bar you love to go to, where they know your drink and the sound of the crowd wraps you up like a comfortable sweater, and the music on the jukebox has been the soundtrack to some of the best moments of your life (the ones you remember!). That bar.) and somebody passes around the phone, and everybody asks the same questions: "How's the tour? Where are you? How's the show going? Are you having fun?"

The answers are usually the same, too:

1. Exhausting, challenging
2. I'm not sure, let me ask someone, somewhere in the midwest/south/southwest/west/east, I think. At a hotel near the highway.
3. Exhausting, challenging, the kids were pretty good/not bad/noisy/rotten. The set was pretty good/a rattling deathtrap/the bane of my existence/rotten today, and we drove a few hours/a long time/forever to get to the hotel
4. Yes and no. Define "fun".

And you miss them so much it's insane, and you realize that you have almost nothing to say. And they try to tell you about the day-to-day stuff that is so much a part of your life back home, and you do your best to listen, but it seems so remote from where you are and what you're doing that you almost find yourself thinking of other things. You snap back to reality just in time to catch the person saying the tail end of something you're pretty sure was important, but it's already gone, and you feel bad.

You find yourself changing in response to forces that you have, perhaps, never encountered before, pieces of yourself warping under massive pressure and torque, whole sub-personalities you haven't heard from in years coming to the surface and demanding to be heard, to do what they want. Your body changes, you lose weight, or gain it in weird places. You're sore, and bruised, but you feel stronger and more sure of yourself than even just a week ago. Except when you feel weak and lonely, or just adrift, or horny.

Change is inevitable. Our response to it is what shapes us. But real change is never easy, or without sacrifice. The image above is the The Tower card from tarot. "Significant change is brought about rapidly and unexpectedly". Says it all, I think.