Elizabeth, Colorado, USA, 2000

The sky is still tinged sapphire from night, though a thin golden-pink band rims the western horizon as I sit down at my desk to write. I sit here pretty much every morning before the dawn, seeking something that I will later qualify with the words holy and sacred. I open my notebook of recycled paper, and flip through the handwritten pages until I reach a blank page. After some thinking, I begin writing.

This morning, I'm working on my novel, as I've been since the beginning the middle of May. It's almost summer solstice now, and the novel feels like it is in full bloom beneath my agile young mind and nimble young fingertips. I adore this story, its characters. I swoon with love for it, so much so that I will become addled, unable to understand the tale objectively. There's no distance between me and the words now, and the flow through me like the bright morning light floods through my windows

I am incandescent and glorious.

I am 16.

I don't know that this place I've claimed for myself here, in the early morning silence and solitude, could be called home.

Some Have Names But Most Do Not

The word "home" comes from Germanic languages. English is classified as a (mostly) Germanic language, though it also has healthy smatterings of French and Latin. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, a form of French was spoken by the nobility in ye olde England, while the lower class spoke a Germanic tongue. Plain, everyday words in English, like home, thus come from the common folk. And the word home, with its cosy wide "o" and soft, comforting "h" and "m", sounds exactly like what it means.

Norwich, Norfolk, UK, 2004

I am starving.

I'm wandering around campus at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, where I've been deposited to study abroad for a year. I don't know that I will happily return to this university for my graduate degree in Creative Writing a few years later.

Right now, I'm preoccupied with the fact that there is no food to be had on campus. Sure, there's a kind of cafe that I discovered had salads and scones -- light fare -- but nothing substantive. No dining halls, for instance, which is what I was used to back in the States. Instead, I'm greeted by a whole lot of gray, brutalist buildings -- dormitories and lecture halls -- and my very empty stomach. The last thing I ate was ages ago on my flight into London and the U.K..

I amble back to my own dormitory. I don't know that this dormitory, Waveney Terrace, will be demolished in order to make way for newer, more fashionable and modern ones, many years later. Again, my focal point is my stomach, and I go to the kitchen, feeling hungry, alone, and miserable. I'm not sure why I go into the kitchen, because any food there certainly doesn't belong to me.

This is where I meet one of my neighbors, Aziz. He's a slender man with red-brown skin, thinning black hair, and enormous gray eyes, who takes one look at me and asks if I'm hungry. I say yes.

I don't remember if we made introductions before or after Aziz cooked me a pot of noodles, but I do remember that said noodles were exceedingly well-seasoned in black pepper. I nearly choked on my first bite. My eyes prickled with tears, and not because Aziz was telling me horror stories about how bland English food was.

"I tell you, Jess," he said in his Pakistani accent, "I wept, the food was so bad."

I sniffled and nodded in agreement as I shoveled that pot of noodles into my mouth. Despite the black pepper, it was still the most delicious thing I'd ever tasted.

Little did I know in that moment that this place -- the university, the whole drippy gray country -- would become home to me in a short while.

Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA, 2013ish

Lights strung between brick walls glow like small stars. In the lavender blue twilight, they illuminate the back patio of Swirl Wine Bar, deserted now except for me and my friend. Our plates lay empty except for a few crumbs, though our glasses still have a little left. Together, we are talking about writing. More precisely, my writing. Though my friend, Roberta, is a talented writer herself, she is giving me space now to explain my most recent attempt at a novel.

Roberta gazes at me with bright green eyes. Her red hair, which she dyes because it's beginning to silver, contrasts sharply with those eyes and her pale skin. She gives me an almost languid smile of encouragement as I speak.

I try to explain to her that my main character, Sivas, is trans. That I'm trying to find a language for him that will describe his experiences as what we would call a trans man. She gives me an off-the-cuff remark, something about being careful about telling such a story as an outsider.

"It is my story," I say, coming out to her as trans.

I watch momentary confusion scuttle across her features and then something like determination, affirmation. And something that could be love, though it's early in our friendship. She reaches for me across the table and we join hands, fingers intertwining in a moment of perfect understanding and acceptance.

I am in my late twenties, young enough to be her son, because she is in her sixties. I know then that she is a true friend, accepting me unconditionally and without question. I don't know then that her friendship, her love, would end up saving me. That her entire family -- husband and three sons -- will come to accept me unconditionally as well. And that their love will carve out a place I'll call home for years.

Denver, Colorado, USA, 2021

The dancing has begun.

Night swathes O'Kane Park in black and purple. What leaves are left in the trees shimmer amber in the pale moonlight. And under this pavilion by the pond, a group of literal heathens has gathered.

We're a motley assortment, some dressed in jeans and puffer vests, others sporting long witchy dresses and cloaks.

The ritual has ended. We welcomed the gods and goddesses of the harvest, thanking them for the bounty of this year. Now, we congregate beneath a pavilion, forming a rough circle. A woman with white skin and long brown hair begins to chant. Another person nearby takes up the chant in a deep, thrumming baritone. Their lip piercings wink silver through the dark, and their hair is long and shaggy with a beard to match. An assortment of tattoos twist around this person's arms, colors rippling in the half-light as others start chanting along, and clapping.

At first the drumbeats are tentative, but then they gain strength and power, flowing through the night-darkness and the gathered crowd. Whooping and yelling as people throw their bodies forward in a dance. They twist and shimmy and prance around in the middle of our circle, matching the rhythm of the drums and chanting. Their bodies vibrate with joy, with abandon.

On the outskirts of the circle, I yearn to join the dance. This is my first time at a pagan ritual, though I've been a solitary practioner for years. But I never knew rituals could involve singing and dancing like the world has caught fire. I'm about to spring into the center when the older woman with short, gray and white hair next to me tries to rise and stumbles. I help her to her feet, and then when she says she wants to go home for the evening, I assist in carrying her chair back to her car.

The dancing recedes behind us. We talk for the time it takes to walk -- or in her case, hobble -- to her car. Her name is Constance, and she wears the mantle of "Crone" with pride, though sometimes it's harder to get out these days. Once she's safely tucked into her car in the parking lot, I say goodbye and return to the circle.

The dancing has dwindled, and the chanting and drumbeats soon patter to a halt as well. I'm disappointed to miss out, even if it was right to help Constance. Little do I know that this will not be the last chance I have to dance. No, I will have many chances to dance and to sing in circle, and in the not so distant future, I will find myself leading dances, beating on a drum, singing. All the faces that are foreign to me now will be familiar in a few years. Until I find myself beneath the moon and stars on another night, having finished an initiation ritual, and having found another people, another place I call home.

Phichit, Thailand, 2025

I am exhausted.

The sunlight drops scalding from the sky as I lumber home. It's been a long day, weaving through thick throngs of students, trying to maintain their attention as they do their make-up and hair, or doodle on their arms. My throat is ragged and scratchy from trying to speak over the crowds.

The sidewalk I'm walking is hideously uneven, though paved, and it makes the journey more difficult. Clambering through sudden dips and rises, past students who pay more attention to the street vendors selling fried chicken and fries than to their teacher. (Though, to be fair, most of them do say "hello teacher" when they do notice me.)

When I finally make it to the road my apartment building hunkers next to, I'm nearly run over by a few motorbikes, and greeted by the feral dogs which wander the streets here. Avoiding the dogs, I scramble up the driveway to my apartment, and then two flights of stairs to my front door.

My apartment is cramped and stuffy from having the air conditioning shut off all day, and it's the first thing I do after flicking on the too-bright main light: turn on the AC and relax in the cooling blast.

I'm sweaty, sticky, and tired, and all I want to do is lie down on my bed and sleep for a thousand years. I get on my phone and fiddle around as I begin to unwind, easing, as much as I can, into the rock-hard mattress that came with my apartment. This is a mattress that is so hard it has no give in it. I bought a mattress pad, which helps, but it's still harder than any mattress I've ever encountered.

Still, I fall asleep. When I wake up it's 9 p.m. and pitch black outside, without stars or moon. They are obscured in clouds, or simply gone. I don't know for sure. I haven't seen much of the stars or moons since moving to Thailand, and not for lack of trying. The night skies here just seem black and barren, rather than blooming with white stars and moon.

I grumble to myself over falling asleep right after making it home -- again -- and get up to eat some dinner. Yogurt, this time, because I'm low on cereal. Eventually I will take a shower -- thankfully not cold because I recently had a hot water heater installed -- and roll into bed. I'll wake up around 5:30 a.m. and in the pitch darkness, get up and get ready for work. I'll walk in the low post-dawn sunlight to work, getting sweaty and sticky before my first class, so much so I'll have to change my shirt when I arrive at school.

I don't know yet that I am absolutely miserable, though I have a sense of . . . something being off. I've made no friends, not really, and on nights when I don't fall asleep when I come home, I struggle to write. I have no place to sit and write, like a desk. Sitting on my bed is awkward and uncomfortable, sitting in the chair I ordered online hurts after half an hour. Cafes all close around 5 and 6 p.m., and I get home around 4:45, leaving me only a sliver of time to work in such places. Phichit is a small town and there's not much to do here, so I feel myself atrophying quietly, as a person and a writer. In the past four months, I have barely touched my current novel-in-progress.

When I landed in Thailand, and I'd had high hopes. I thought: this is it. This is my new home.

I will be 42 in November, but between the aches and pains of walking everywhere beneath the blistering sun, and being worn out and worn down by my job, I feel far older.

And as I go to bed now, all I feel is the dull ache of disappointment.

Welcome Home, Son

The last time I sent out a newsletter, I was still in Thailand, teaching English as a foreign language. I have since returned to the United States, where I am spending time with family and regrouping

It will be Thanksgiving in a few days as I write this, and I've been thinking a lot about the concept of home: how to define it and what it means to me. In the process, I've thought a lot about the places, people, and experiences that have been home for me in the past.

Now, as I look to the future, I am cautiously optimistic. I am excited for the future, and my options, though it might be tough going for a little while. We shall see.

This concludes issue 7 of Wellspring. I'll see you all again in February of 2026. Have a blessed, fulfilling, and maybe even relaxing holiday season.

Until then, you can find me on my website, BlueSky, and Facebook, and read past issues of Wellspring here in the archives.

Take care all!

P.S. The title of this newsletter, and couple of the headers, comes from the song "Welcome Home, Son" by the band Radical Face. You can listen to it here on Youtube.