Seven years ago today, I arrived in Boulder from Chicago to start a new life. It feels like just yesterday. But not. I didn’t have any friends in Boulder, I didn’t have a job, I didn’t have much of anything, except maybe anger. Still working on that!

In Boulder and Denver I’ve met some of the best people on the planet. I’ve made such wonderful friends here and have such an incredible community that it’s almost overwhelming to think about. I have lots of jobs now: lots of them. Probably more than is advisable. But somehow, it always seems to work out, and I love everything I do (most of the time). There are two universities in Boulder: The University of Colorado and Naropa University. Today was the first day of classes at both Universities. I taught a class of 95 students at CU this the morning, and a class of 6 students at Naropa this afternoon. The contrast is interesting. Going back and forth between the two Universities over the last several years has provided me with quite an interesting education. I honestly couldn’t say which I like better; they’re so different. But I have such wonderful students every semester at both places. It’s so fabulous that they both exist in what is truly a relatively small town.

Seven years ago today, as I was arriving in Boulder, Hurricane Katrina was swirling towards the Gulf. Just hours later the storm surge would breach more than 50 levees in New Orleans and the Katrina would make landfall, becoming one of the most destructive and deadly hurricanes in the history of the US. For some reason this affected me in a really visceral way. I moved to NY on September 11th, 2001, so I’m no stranger to extreme, tragic events. But Hurricane Katrina, a disaster that unfolded more than 1,000 miles from my new Rocky Mountain home, had a much larger impact on me. I haven’t spent much time in the affected areas, but I felt a deep sense of grief around this disaster in particular. I suppose it’s cultural, in part. I grew up in East Texas, not far from Shreveport, Louisiana, and have a strong pull to the American South. I always have. Maybe I spent past lives there. Who knows. I can’t listen to a dixieland band without crying, this is a fact.

Soon after I moved to Boulder, I founded a theatre company, square product theatre. We just closed the first production in our seventh season, and it was a blast. There was a lot of laughing that happened in that theatre, this I can tell you. For the last two years, we’ve been developing a theatre piece based on Selah Saterstrom’s forthcoming novel SLAB, which will be available from Coffee House Press in the Spring. SLAB is a gorgeous, often funny, and truly heartbreaking piece of writing that the author says is “energized by” Hurricane Katrina. It’s tough to say you’re working on a piece “about” Hurricane Katrina, and really, the piece is about so much more than that, though the aftermath of the storm does play a very important role in the work. I like thinking of it as being “energized by” rather than “about.”

It’s been a really difficult piece to work on because of the emotional reaction I have to the material: the thought of people leaving their homes and never returning, a concept which is all at once terrifying, heartbreaking, wondrous, and rejuvenating. To think: sometimes you make the choice to leave home, and sometimes the choice is made for you, but either way there’s always a nostalgia for a home that only exists in memory, maybe only even in imagination, and there’s also the thrill (and sometimes terror) of exploring new opportunities and vistas, the unknown. We think of home as safe, but home is not always safe. Sometimes home is deadly. Sometimes leaving home is the only way to survive.

Our adaptation of SLAB will be in development for at least another two years. It’s huge. It’s the largest project we’ve ever undertaken, but I really believe that it will be powerful, magical even. I hope you’ll come and see it when it’s ready.