Homes

I just realized that I'll never move home again.

It's more of a revelation than it should be, perhaps, given that since the moment I rose from my anxiety on the east coast (circa mid-January 2008, the dawn of the second half of my freshman year), I felt more alive, in more ways, lasting and weighty and ingrediential, than I had ever felt nestled in my little pink room in my white stucco house on the hills of California. I was never meant for there.

But I've been saying it, aloud and to myself, the same way I swore not to be "one of those people" who move to New York the second their cap is paused in air; I've sworn I would move home. Home. Eventually. But home shifts. I also swore that wouldn't be the case for me. Family is too dear - too essential, too understanding, too much a part of my crucial fullness - but I think I'm coming to terms with a new idea. That they can mean the world to me. That I can be forever grateful for their constant support. That when I think of my Dad, a tear comes to my eye - that I've thought a lot about their deaths this past year or so, suddenly and regretfully and without much cause, and I've felt paralyzed. That I couldn't be the person I am today without them, particularly without him; would be something weak, frail, and possibly and permanently imprisoned within myself. But they're not my home, not anymore.

I'm sitting on this plane back from my first Thanksgiving as a college graduate/as a Brooklynite/financially independent/pick your trope. Listening to Matt & Kim sing Grand Street's autumn, its orange independence and that centered feeling. Had a half bottle of wine, sure. Read most of the best book I've read since Tony's class (The Art of Fielding: let it remind me how I fall in love with books). Indeed flying back to a lonely, drafty room on the fourth floor of a building in northern Brooklyn; it smells like pastrami and often diapers. I have fewer friends than I've known in some time, and I have to strive to connect. No boy/man; no love in that sense. Yet I will feel home. Or at least, I will know that it's where I am supposed to be. And when I arise for work tomorrow - it will feel like 4am, California's remnant effects - I will do so grudgingly, anticipatorily, with a dab of longing. But it's right. This coast, at least. To have narrowed down my world that much is a feat of which I'm proud.

On the L

Things I want to look like I'm thinking about on the subway:

- Whether DFW is more beloved postmortem and if it's the influence of his deathly mystique
- The ultra-cool Bushwick parties I'm going to that night
- Kinky yet not weird sex things. Including possible bisexual liaisons
- "making money"; "being broke"
- My awesome, totally liberating, super progressive writing job
- Whether that cute boy with the babyface will smile at me
- Saying "fuck it all" and moving back to Baltimore


Things I'm actually thinking about:

- Whether there's anything in the fridge for dinner or if I should pick up some sad meal of sweet potatoes and/or an Annie's veggie lasagna
- Why I don't have more friends in this city, and why the ones I do have live two subway rides and certain awkward social protocols away
- Whether I have gotten any OkCupid messages from boys who can spell, are attractive, and don't have blatantly weird fetishes
- Guilt over how much shit my parents are actually paying for; how to pretend I'm paying rent by myself
- My decent, mostly unfulfulling, kind of vapid writing job
- Whether that cute boy with the babyface will smile at me
- Saying "fuck it all" and moving back to Baltimore