Pants

Well, sitting on the bouncing number 7 bus to town yesterday I noticed a small tear of frayed white edges working its way across the left leg of my favorite jeans (although just to make sure we're not over sentimentalizing this, it is also my only pair of jeans). As I stared, it got me thinking about the times in our lives when the things that are the most comfortable begin to wear out. Now, back in my flat, I'm thinking about the fate of the pants, and apart from the fact that this confirms the glory of the double-kneed duck Carhartts for which such a fabric thinning would never be an issue, it might just be that these pants are now borderline for making the boxes to go home.

"'Home' you say?"

Why yes indeed. Sometimes you've just got to let go of things, whether those things are as simple as a pair of pants or as complicated as the place you've lived for the last two years. The next two months are now the time I have to figure out how to say goodbye to Liuyang and to China for the time being as I've decided to move on, first to Denver and a return to the greatest comforts of family and friends and then to London where I'll be entering the London School of Economics for a Masters in development studies. Big changes in life are big because they shatter the comforts of the past with the uncertainty of the future, and while I often rant against settling into comforts and routines, there is something, well, comforting about the attachments we inevitably form to places and even more so, to people. So as the months become weeks and the weeks days and packing approaches the sorting won't be limited to pairs of pants, which is too bad, 'cause man would that be easier.