Been down so long...

Video stills from "Imitation of a Sound"

It's now 2007 and I'm looking at my last post from the mid-section of 2006. My life is about 180 degrees different now, I am a midwesterner, or atleast I spend most of my weeks in the belly of the states. I am a student again, so I work late at night, I quell my mind with bad TV, and sleep in past the 9-5ers. I am in a relationship which conveniently began in New York a month or so before I moved. So I long and pine.

I'm in San Francisco with my boyfriend before my second semester starts. I've had five weeks off, which is approximately equivalent to the vacation I had in New York the last four years. I often wake up and begin to feel on edge that I have nothing concrete to accomplish during the next 24 hour period and then I begin to relax with some coffee and a slow breakfast. I've picked up some freelance jobs here and there and have begun mapping out a plan to try to put my art into the world. It's a slow process.

Yesterday I took the train to Berkeley to meet my childhood friend, John, for lunch. We were friends when we were twelve and thirteen and then we lived in different places until we were friends again in New York, almost a decade later. Sometimes continuity is amazing medicine. As a former East-Coasters and former members of the New York work force we have more in common at this point in our lives than I realized. I began to hear myself, my worries and stresses and melodramatic thoughts in John as we talked about navigating through the gates of academia in unfamiliar stretches of the country. I guess we had a lot to complain about—the overwhelming exhaust of car culture, how long it takes to get a cup of coffee, trying to make new friends years after high school lunch table politics, shopping in stripmalls, trying not to scoff at idealistic undergrads, getting out of bed. But it wasn't really complaining, it was rich conversation, and in the end I think we both admitted some form of "I know I'm in the right place."

Now that it's a new year and I am settled into my new life in Chicago, though still unsure which states border on either side, I realize how much I miss writing. I am planning to get back to it, and revisit this blog once a week now. I hope some one might still be around to read.