Sep. 13, 2010
It is cloudy today. For some reason it is these days that make me the most homesick. Is it only because I associate grey skies and rain with Portland so much? Or is the inward reflection that darker weather brings? I’m listening to Arcade Fire. There is so little of the familiar here. I try not to compare things. Try to take things for what they are. Some days are better than other. Warm sunny afternoons become their own entities that stand a part, like warm memories of a summer vacation. But autumn is coming on and with it becomes the reality of the choice I have made. But then I have always been a little afraid of autumn. I have never know why. Something of the unknown, the new, and the death of the old, knowing you will have to face winter soon. Wondering if you will be able to stand the cold that is coming, and here, wondering if I even know what is coming.
That last sentence can mean so many things. One moment I’m thrilled to my finger tips at the newness of everything, then the next, I’m terrified and my head is swirling and I wonder how I ended up three thousand miles from everything, that I realize now being so far from, I love so much. I also wonder why I’m mostly compelled to write these things only when I’m feeling slightly melancholy.
I saw a cardinal last night. I have only ever seen pictures of cardinals in books, so this small thing while I was sitting on my deck in the last of the afternoon sun, seemed quite extraordinary. For some reason, I have come to take a kind of comfort in watching the birds, realizing that there are many I do not recognize and can only wonder what they are. Goldfinches in the garden, and a whole flock of some large brown variegated bird out my bedroom window that filled the tree and made such a noise that I thought it was the rain. There are many sparrows in Providence, far more than in Portland. I have come to watch them as some people might watch the sky for signs of a change at sea. As long as I see sparrows, they seem to me my sign that things will be alright, and that I am where I should be. Ah, if only I could find my chickadees! I love them more than any other bird. For I will always be thirteen standing in the snow with my hands full of seeds stretched out to meet the hungry winter chickadees. . . .
Monday, September 13, 2010
The Last Train
Aug. 10, 2010
I only have keys to an apartment in Providence now. For some reason, I feel like don’t live anywhere at the present. For some reason turning in my keys at PSU was the hardest thing to do. Somewhere in my mind I feel that there is a saying about keys and how many you keep on a key ring. I only have two now.
It is odd to start over from nothing to have a whole life and then in the course of a few short months, god, not even really, in the course of month, you have the life of an entirely different person. I’m on the train now. This will probably be the last time I am on this train. I overhear a conversation next to me; a twelve year old girl and her mother are talking about chickens. Rhode Island Reds are the biggest they say. Ironic.
I have always wondered if odd little occurrences in the universe are there or if they materialize serendipitously as the world changes around you. I suppose, really, it doesn’t matter. Only suddenly in a faraway place, or a crowded restaurant, someone calls out the name of a very close friend and in a kind of Proustian moment you are whisked away to a different time and place. You look up and wish you could be somewhere else, somewhere that doesn’t exist anymore and is lost in time.
But I’m moving forward now. I cross a bridge. The sun is setting behind me. I admire the mountains that I will soon be trading for the Atlantic. There is too much emotion to contain. Wondering who I will see again and who will fade into memory. The sun is low now, the landscape glowing with low yellow sun that reminds me of August in my childhood. Sunlight that always signaled the end of summer and the beginning of autumn, and somehow made me sad because it was the end of a season, haunting me with the kind of melancholy that fills up Sunday afternoon.
Two young people in the seat behind me talk about traveling to different cities. The young man has a three day beard, the girl has green dyed hair that is fading. The man says that he has lived in a kind of communal situation for the past two years, and the two days he has been alone has felt like two months. He explains how he hates being lonely. Most people don’t like to be lonely. For the first time really ever, I’m actually worried about my solitude. I know from traveling the intense solitude that overwhelms me is passing, I learn from it and it silently slips into my blood and becomes me when I come home. But what happens when you have no home to return to? What happens when the adventure is a one way ticket to a very different place? I suppose one must trust it. What else is there to do?
The young man and woman are still chatting about languages. She sings a prayer in Portuguese. He says how pretty it is. They continue on like this. The old woman sitting next to me is eating a cup of rammen soup. When she is finished, she leaves the paper Amtrak napkin draped over one knee. I crane my neck to see the Gorge behind me, and sneeze because of the sun. “Bless, you,” she says.
The light is getting low now. The trees are getting sparse. I am almost home now. Ah, if only that were true. I have to home right now other than where I might leave my suitcase for the night. It seem I am often finding myself on the train these days, somewhere caught in transition. A difficult place according to Rilke because you cannot stay there. Ah, Rilke, then why does it so often seem the only constant?
I only have keys to an apartment in Providence now. For some reason, I feel like don’t live anywhere at the present. For some reason turning in my keys at PSU was the hardest thing to do. Somewhere in my mind I feel that there is a saying about keys and how many you keep on a key ring. I only have two now.
It is odd to start over from nothing to have a whole life and then in the course of a few short months, god, not even really, in the course of month, you have the life of an entirely different person. I’m on the train now. This will probably be the last time I am on this train. I overhear a conversation next to me; a twelve year old girl and her mother are talking about chickens. Rhode Island Reds are the biggest they say. Ironic.
I have always wondered if odd little occurrences in the universe are there or if they materialize serendipitously as the world changes around you. I suppose, really, it doesn’t matter. Only suddenly in a faraway place, or a crowded restaurant, someone calls out the name of a very close friend and in a kind of Proustian moment you are whisked away to a different time and place. You look up and wish you could be somewhere else, somewhere that doesn’t exist anymore and is lost in time.
But I’m moving forward now. I cross a bridge. The sun is setting behind me. I admire the mountains that I will soon be trading for the Atlantic. There is too much emotion to contain. Wondering who I will see again and who will fade into memory. The sun is low now, the landscape glowing with low yellow sun that reminds me of August in my childhood. Sunlight that always signaled the end of summer and the beginning of autumn, and somehow made me sad because it was the end of a season, haunting me with the kind of melancholy that fills up Sunday afternoon.
Two young people in the seat behind me talk about traveling to different cities. The young man has a three day beard, the girl has green dyed hair that is fading. The man says that he has lived in a kind of communal situation for the past two years, and the two days he has been alone has felt like two months. He explains how he hates being lonely. Most people don’t like to be lonely. For the first time really ever, I’m actually worried about my solitude. I know from traveling the intense solitude that overwhelms me is passing, I learn from it and it silently slips into my blood and becomes me when I come home. But what happens when you have no home to return to? What happens when the adventure is a one way ticket to a very different place? I suppose one must trust it. What else is there to do?
The young man and woman are still chatting about languages. She sings a prayer in Portuguese. He says how pretty it is. They continue on like this. The old woman sitting next to me is eating a cup of rammen soup. When she is finished, she leaves the paper Amtrak napkin draped over one knee. I crane my neck to see the Gorge behind me, and sneeze because of the sun. “Bless, you,” she says.
The light is getting low now. The trees are getting sparse. I am almost home now. Ah, if only that were true. I have to home right now other than where I might leave my suitcase for the night. It seem I am often finding myself on the train these days, somewhere caught in transition. A difficult place according to Rilke because you cannot stay there. Ah, Rilke, then why does it so often seem the only constant?
Landing
July 21, 2010
Day one. Landing in New York didn't seem quite so strange today. Whenever I actually think about how it is that I'm really coming to live here, it doesn't seem real, but when I realize that I will not be only visiting, I'm overwhelmed with a kind of vertigo. Walking to the AirTrian platform I could have burst in to tears but only for a moment. I wonder what I have done at times, knowing so little of what to expect. The city feel quite normal to me. Strange for a place I have only been to twice.
I realized today that the New York subway smells a certain way. I can't quite place it. A little old, a little dirty, something of plastic and stale air and warm bodies moving though it very fast. But for some reason this also always makes me feel a little lost. On a train leaving the city it seemed very odd. I can't quite place what it is. Perhaps it is the difference in architecture? Perhaps it is the different slant of the sun? Perhaps it is the briskness of the people? But there is something that hangs in the air for me like the melancholy like the sunlight in an Edward Hopper painting, warming and yet containing a certain distance.
Day one. Landing in New York didn't seem quite so strange today. Whenever I actually think about how it is that I'm really coming to live here, it doesn't seem real, but when I realize that I will not be only visiting, I'm overwhelmed with a kind of vertigo. Walking to the AirTrian platform I could have burst in to tears but only for a moment. I wonder what I have done at times, knowing so little of what to expect. The city feel quite normal to me. Strange for a place I have only been to twice.
I realized today that the New York subway smells a certain way. I can't quite place it. A little old, a little dirty, something of plastic and stale air and warm bodies moving though it very fast. But for some reason this also always makes me feel a little lost. On a train leaving the city it seemed very odd. I can't quite place what it is. Perhaps it is the difference in architecture? Perhaps it is the different slant of the sun? Perhaps it is the briskness of the people? But there is something that hangs in the air for me like the melancholy like the sunlight in an Edward Hopper painting, warming and yet containing a certain distance.
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