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I really want to visit Cecilia Vicuña’s exhibition: Reverse Migration, a Poetic Journey at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), but I bought her book and poster instead. I listened to her talk at IMMA with her partner, the poet James O’Hern, five minutes at a time. It took me a few days of puttering around, but I finally saw that she will have another exhibit starting in November, a mere six-ish hours from where I live. A flight to Ireland I cannot do right now, but a drive to Los Angeles? That’s possible.

In my thirty-something years, I’ve never left the U.S. I was close in college — got my passport in a rush so I could go to Mexico with a family I nannied for — but it fell through. This summer, Michael and I are taking our kids to Europe. A sentence that rings in my ears because I don’t know if I believed it would ever happen as it wasn’t part of my childhood. Leaving the country is hard to believe to be real, but I’m as ready as I can be. (To Michael’s deep amusement, I keep joking about not coming back loljk.)

Our main plans are to eat and laze about. But I also have my eye on the Leonora Carrington exhibit at the Luxembourg Museum and the Kerry James Marshall exhibit at Kunsthaus Zürich. As someone who hasn’t traveled outside my country of birth, I’ve spent time thinking about why I value being where I am: Being tethered to a place, tending to my relationship with a place and my cohabitants. One of the most compelling reasons for me to leave, I’m realizing, is to see art, buildings, people, animals, plants, in their environment. Not to pretend it’s mine, or that I know anything about it, but to just be somewhere else as unobtrusively as possible.

After living in Phoenix for over twenty years total, and since 2017, I know and treasure much of what I find locally. On our first date, Michael and I went to the Phoenix Art Museum and bonded over an infatuation with small Ed Mell watercolors we’ve never been able to find again. We take our kids there and to smaller galleries across the sprawl. It’s part of how I’ve gotten to know my city, and carve out a contented home in a tumultuous area.

I think that the trip to Europe feels surreal because, slightly, I was avoiding it. On many levels it would be easier (not to mention cheaper) to stay home and go to the art museum that’s down the street. It’s tempting to let it be something I talk about wanting to do in the ever-moving someday. Once I saw that in myself, I knew we needed to jump on this opportunity and run headlong into something new. Perhaps once I’m back, driving to LA to look at some spectacular art won’t feel so far-fetched.

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