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.

brooklyn beds.

soft morning light through a brownstone window. it's raining, still. despite the cold, warm skin and dirty hair.

i woke up thinking of skyscrapers made of books and marcel proust.

...not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

i hop and skip around the city. park slope, soho, williamsburg, lower east side, upper west side, bed-stuy. tomorrow i go to a city two hours south, only to return to more friends, more skips.



breathing easy in a city of smog.

sometimes clarity and uncertainty are great tools for adventure.

fever sleeves.

i look at my clothes from costa rica and am absolutely abhorred by the idea of wearing them again. i'm not the only one who feels this way. i lived in those bright, plaid work shirts for four months, and as great as they are, i think we need a break from one another.

I can't get over the dresses, the pearls, even lipstick? C'mon, what is this? I go to happy hour at Bourbon (new), dinner at Jaleo (not new). Get sophisticated at chocolate tastings in Chevy Chase, but will always be down for shouting along to Fugazi songs at Black Cat's "NO CONTROL." Vegan brunch at Asylum with old punks but where are my cutoffs?

So tell me. Tell me tell me tell me.

I'm growing up and growing out. I don't run on punk time. I don't run on punk anything, anymore. Well, nothing exclusively punk. I don't know, I just don't have the patience for it.

I really should clean my records.

So I spend the night packing for New York, listening to Q and Not U and wondering where this whole little world of mine went. When punk and DIY was all new and lively and vibrant. What year was it, 2003? When my co-worker at Teaism would play Q and Not U and Fugazi over the restaurant speakers if our general manager wasn't around. Summer nights at Fort Reno with Arizona tallboys and cupcakes by Kristen and fresh fruit from Whole Foods. What year was it, 2005? When I received dozens of mixes of music I didn't know (and now can sing along to whole albums by heart). And when did it stop? When it was more than just straight-edge or veganism, when it was a family. What year did we draw the lines? 2006?

"friendship and mix cds don't have expiration dates...mix cds are nice, but friends are better. friends aren't a commodity. if you lose one, there might not be one to replace them."

Does it really matter when it all fell apart? The point is it fell, and I can't tell you what I replaced or lost or gained. I can only tell you what I have, right now. And I have friends and family, shelter, food, health. opportunity and privilege. literacy.

I have enough to never be bored.

the return.

Since my return to the United States and conclusion of my travel blog, a few people have asked if I would continue writing. Prompted, I tried to write a couple entries, but I was never satisfied with them. One of the great things about my blog in Costa Rica was that often they were reflections, less impulsive, since I did not have access to technology except during the time I was at the Institute (and when I had time at the Institute, to partake in extracurricular writing). The writings I began I found to be too impulsive; too stressed, too tired, too homesick.

I returned four weeks ago without a plan: no apartment, no job, no tour, no date book. In that respect, I didn't "hit the ground running," in old-fashioned Hillary style. I was not, however, without things to do, and while my resilience to culture shock lasted a couple weeks, I soon succumbed to the exhaustion of the city and broke down. Now that this barrier has been, well, at least acknowledged, it really makes me evaluate my life, daily, by the minute, here in Washington, and what matters to me and why. I'm constantly evaluating my position, my move, my options, and while that sounds like a lot of work, it actually allows me to omit the faux-obligations, which are not always the necessities.

That's not to say I don't have some relief being back in the city. I've had quite the time, so far, with my re-entry. The first week I primarily spent with my parents. The second week I had a good friend from Ohio visit me. The third week I worked close to 60 hours at my old job, making a good amount of money despite my current desire for high-class material investments (i.e. trying to look relatively professional and secure in my appearance).

And then, last week, week four, I finally broke. The city made me claustrophobic. It overwhelmed me with options, pressured me to always be accessible by technology, constantly on my feet and rapidly switching environments, although similar, subtly different. I found the people high-maintenance and overly stressed. It all moved too fast. And there was so much about this that I didn't miss feeling, and I didn't want to fall back into that.

A lot of the above relates mostly to the strangers I encounter, while others more in my transportation adventures around the city. It all seems so...unstable. There are more buildings but less love for them. Less purity, less simplicity.

Enough about the city. Certainly, something has changed in the core of my being. We, as humans, constantly change, but somewhere in me, I see my relationships with this world differently. Maybe that's the fresh air talking (or lack thereof), but there are particular things I no longer want a part in, and others I'm striving to enter. It's a new world, and I have every door open to me.

Two days ago I turned 21. I went out to brunch at Jaleo, with my dad buying me my first drink. For lunch, my best friend Alex and I went to our old neighborhood sushi spot, where they gave us free drinks and even a scoop of green tea ice cream with a candle and awkwardly sang happy birthday to me. For dinner, I had a small group of friends over to my mom's apartment, playing bananagrams and eating fresh, good, classic food and drink. It was low-key, quiet, and comfortable, and exactly what I'm looking for in my life, currently.

In the chaos, I want to find something sustainable. I want to start small, and rebuild.

When I wrote my zine Two Thousand and Great at the end of last year, I threw the term "sustainable" around a lot, mainly because I felt it was such and important term, and it's meaning was what I would discover (or thought I would discover) while abroad. So I use it less frequently now, and with more understanding, more comprehension, more knowledge of what it is, and what it takes. It is a life-long goal to strive for, but I think it's a pretty good one to have.

So how do I start small? Intimacy. Small groups. Family. Watching Little League in Turtle Park. Coffee in Adams Morgan. Backyard BBQs. Family dinners with gin & tonics and middle eastern food. Taking it one day at a time. Small things. Simple things.

Sustenance.