2003-10-03 - 11:36 p.m.
I came home to Maine for a weekend and found a chilly night where already I can see my breathe and a sky that was so dark at 7:30 pm that it felt like our house was a space ship floating out in deep space. My friends Rana, Keight and Lauren are here with me and being here with them makes home feel warmer. It makes it feel less quiet, less isolated, less weird. It helps me fill in the gaps between what and how I live in New York and where I came from. To see and to show, "this is where I come from", to help friends understand and also to share, because where we come from is important and friends become family.
Plus, it's fun to play show and tell with your past lives. "Here's the polaroid I took of you in 1999 in Olympia, here is the dress I wore to the prom in 9th grade, here are the horse show ribbons I won, here are all the old records I have yet to get rid of." Lauren looks at a picture of me with very long, wavy hair, a flowy skirt and green tank top on my 16th birthday.
"Why are you dressed like that?" she asks.
"Because that's how I dressed." I answer. We laugh and laugh and look at ourselves now in dark jeans and city shoes and dark sweaters. "I dressed like that too," She finally admits.
On the bus from NYC to Boston, watching the scenery roll by, an itch to travel slips into me. When ever I have a routine I just want to get out of it, and when I am unfixed for long periods of time, without a permanent addres, I all I want is routine. But I start dreaming of all the places I want to go and go back to. Eastern Canada and Wyoming and the Southwest and this is just in the US. I am glad to be here for a little while because it breaks me out of my NYC bubble. I can breathe and get a little perspective before I jump back in. It makes me remember I am not just making up places outside NYC, and restirs that desire in me to always keep exploring. At the same time my friends and I are non-stop scheming to ge the rest of our friends to move to NYC. We speculate on who would make good roommates, where they would live, what would be the easiest way for them to move there, where they might be able to find work. We will not be satisfied until we can call our friends local and be the distance of a subway apart. Perhaps this is because I have been writing so many letters this fall and waiting for them to be returned, feeling like I am cut off from many intense friendships and correspondences. So, I just want people in my town. We've already got a few and watch out, because you might be next and once you get caught up in our plans, well, they're complicated.
