like summer camp, but with drinking.

short hair.
smashing pumpkins.
textbooks.
lisa frank notebooks.
dinosaur earrings.
typewriters.

senior year.

circumnavigate.

so many dirty dishes and empty bottles.
the morning after the incredible feast.

seattle is good.
yes, i would live here.

and the distance is good for me, from everyone. i see photos and hear things and my stomach rises into my chest, just because some people stay connected.
and then there's me, disconnected.

and that was mostly my choice.

but really i'm reconnected. i'm in the northwest visiting my longest known friend. we've made it through twenty-one years of friendship. i'm visiting my best lady friend transplanted from baltimore, after we both shook our roots out from the soil. there are the odds and ends and the news, all which settle my nerves more than any tonic in the east.

i don't know how much i really want to go back.
it'll be good for me.

and my time back in the united states eclipsed my time in costa rica.

the train doesn't stop.

the turn of summer.

i check the blog roll and everyone feels it: the turn of summer.

such a flurry of change everywhere right now. everyone seems to be moving or preparing to, or settling in. eras are ending, new ones are beginning. people are finishing and starting and doing new things and shifting around in the balance, cutting old alliances, tying up loose ends, building new relationships. i guess august has always been the month when this shit all happens at once, for good or ill.

Everyone's posts have been depressing...They're all acknowledging an end to this summer. But I'm not ready.

take me a back a year to this very minute. friendly fire drives me to the airport in columbus so i can catch an early morning flight back to baltimore, one day before they get there, to be at my then-partner's grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary. i am in a yellow/brown/black plaid babydoll dress, running on half an hour's sleep.

when he picks me up, his ex-girlfriend's dog is in the back of his car.

august 10th, 2008, 10:20am. that was the minute summer turned last year.

you could even say it was at 5:45am, as i got in the van in columbus to come home.

with summer's official end a few weeks away, reality sets in. we all have to move on, physically, from our summer escapades. there's an emotional breech, when we became attached to whatever, whomever we identified as our company for these few months, when the days stretch long into the night.

and tomorrow is my final summer's day in dc. but it already turned. i cut and tied, but didn't feel the snapping of heartstrings until saturday night, when i came home and cried, when i realized he realized we were on the same unfortunate page. and my heart sunk a little further last night, and then this morning, when i had no new voicemail. it's the first time he didn't call. i've known, and he's known, and we're both backing away, silently acknowledging the predisposed futility of our relationship.

august 10th, 2009, 6:53am.



so i'm only a little alone again. i help friends move, make cupcakes, and play two-hour games of bananagrams. i can make my life as romantic as i want it to be, it doesn't mean love, or like, have to be involved.


i'm ready for the next flight, then.

last shots.

slim it down and get over the others. a three solid months in DC was better than I could have predicted. But once the sparkle and flare died down, I realized it's still the same. Transient and apathetic. Faceless and ambivalent. Selfish and histrionic. Small picture people. Some people are still in high school, and some, well, I guess they never leave.

I am not proud of my regression back into this social circle. So I dig and scratch and move from side to side and it gets me nowhere...

...until I realize I can just go up and over it.

So there are the handful of people whom I care about seeing on a day to day basis and another handful of people who live hundreds or thousands of miles away most of the year anyway, in which case distance isn't much of a problem. Outside of that, I'm good.

Back to Baltimore in a month. Until then...

Montreal.
Northwest.
Philadelphia.
Nashville.
[insert location].

maximum summer.

weekend spent thrifting and wading waters, exploring suburbs and sweaty basements.

northern virginia, you aren't so bad after all.

best friends return, late night beers by the pool with the gin blossoms on the stereo and an out-of-tune ukelele.

old flames extinguish and hands reach across beds and couches and floors and carseats more and more these days and that's okay with me.

what does dc mean to me these days? Fort Reno, Common Good City Farm, Brain Food, Teaism.

and as the summer peaks distance will grow between this city and me, once again. Berea Fest this weekend, tour with the The Ambulars the week after, followed by a trip to Montreal with my dad. And then it's August and I go west, buying time from the autumn horizon.

There wasn't supposed to be a plan but whatever formula I concoct every summer, well, it always turns out something like this.

(s)witches.

the lack of stagnancy.
i don't feel transient and i don't feel homeless.
transplants everywhere.

i don't quite remember where i left off. philadelphia? right, my nonsensical entry. don't worry about that; new york had healing powers (ironically, i suppose).

i spent five days in philadelphia with two of my good friends, karen and peter. everyday was a different exploration, from manyunk to south street to rittenhouse square to the italian market to the museum. and while i do so much, i always leave philadelphia unfulfilled. wait, you may take that poorly. i just never feel like i get a true feeling of philadelphia, that i've seen enough, that i've run myself deep into the city and can leave knowing more. i feel so much potential in philadelphia but never seem to access whatever that potential is.

i returned to new york for the weekend, where i rendez-vous'd with my good friends from california and made new friends from germany. the pack of 12 are currently on tour down the east coast, and lucky for me, had almost a full three-day stop in new york city. and behold, the punk inside came back out. and it was okay. i was comfortable. and i was surrounded by people who aren't stagnant or unmotivated but people who have done, who do, and who are doing things. my heart fluttered and i let myself believe i didn't have to give up all this for where i think i need and want to be in my life.

so i finally packed up all my bags in brooklyn and headed north yesterday to tivoli, ny. the train ride on the coast of the hudson reminded me of lake arenal...blue surrounded by green and misty. cathedrals of green driving north from poughkeepsie. this town is the best end of my three week escapade.

and it's been a good couple of weeks, too, making trails through the veins of something a little less noisy, a little more homey, and a lot more lovable. less noisy?, you say, of new york? well, brooklyn isn't the same clutter as manhattan. and maybe the noise fades from reality to mentality. but when surrounded by good people, diverse people, i tend to let the expectations ease and roll with the tide.



and i cannot wait to see them again in dc this thursday.


ah, yes, the mighty return.

coetzee, again.

in rittenhouse square park with coetzee's elizabeth costello in my lap. i started one of those interior monologues (they seem to happen frequently, these days). my friend had gone off somewhere, to return at some time "soon," but what is soon when you don't have a watch, or phone, or ipod, or mechanical device that appropriately tells you what time it is, or how much of it has gone by? i do not use the word accurate because what is accurate? everything is askew.

how could i possibly believed i ever understood anything i read as a teenager by milan kundera?

so my head began to scramble words and phrases and criticisms like a blender on pulse, able to catch a snapshot but it changes with each need to see a different texture, a taste, added or reduced. too quick to snatch away any sort of recognizable belief or cohesive sentence, leave it too long and maybe it will melt (or the unfortunate congeal). it all stemmed from thinking about that charming, brightly eyed british engineer passing through my town of 3000, sometimes 4,000 (it fluctuates depending on the season, with that last grand changing identities on a weekly, daily, even hourly basis), but always less than where i am now. it was an environment i could handle, meeting, drinking, acquainting, flirting. and now i'm flung back in the world of many, of too many. here, i will not find the british engineer, nor the tico anthropologist, nor the ex-pat tour guide or baker or bartender. there was nowhere to hide, to make up an identity. there are too many people here, proclaimed in talk, not the act, and the easiest for me to acquaint are the old news, the floaters. i'm in a world of anon.

so this is growing up, finding my way. maybe i took the "finding my way" thing too literally, because i'm geographically waying away from the midatlantic. i see the cranks of the old cycles turning and i lose my footing.

i will learn to hold my ground, there.
i will learn to pull, not push, there.
better than ever before, there.
i will be precise, then. and there.

and precision is connected to accuracy, not time.