From a letter I wrote the week before I left home:

I'm sitting in the middle of a pile of spices and books, drinking a 40. I have 5 days until I leave this place for a brand new-to-me place. I work every day until I leave. I only have the evenings for practical tasks. I am being less than careful about much of the process. The last thing I should be doing is writing letters, but I REALLY need to write a fucking letter. You one, specifically, because I am in the middle of this existentialist mess, this transition time, this joy pain head heart mess, this whirlwind of strange and coincidence and human comedy that has me shaking my head in lack-of-surprise at every turn, and really, who else could I write a letter to about that?


I am going to miss this place desperately, I am realizing, as unhappy as I have been here and as ready to leave. Three nights ago I took a long walk with my friend Maura and a big beer with fiery Mars on the label to Days Park, a thin swath of grass in the oldest part of the city, all the houses narrow and cottage-like, different from one another, surrounded by bars and small galleries and winos. We sat in the grass and talked about doom, and hope, and drank, and then we walked home past a bar we know around the corner from my house, housed in a small house. It is called the Essex Pub. A man we tangentially knew, standing outside, rolled us cigarettes and talked to us about Ireland. I ran into the boy who used to chase me around tables in kindergarten. A woman complimented Maura on her back. There was a birthday party inside, spilling into the street, and Joan Jett was blaring, and then the Fugees. Seasons change, mad things rearrange. We didn't even have to go inside to have such a good time, and then we went home around the corner and cooked a giant pan of zucchinis and heirloom tomatoes that she gathered in her garden, which is around the corner from mine, with a headlamp. We sat on the porch and listened to mariachi music blaring from passing cars, and drug dealers yelling about bitches. We went through all my books together. I am, all of a sudden, not feeling ready to go.


Becky, my big sister figure who gives me gorgeous extended metaphors by which to live my life, is angry with me for quoting so much Alanis Morissette. "I fucking KNEW it!" she said. "You ARE going through one of those 'what does it all mean' things! you CAN'T!!!!! just bounce!!!!!!"


I think what better, or worse, time to be having one of those "what does it all mean" things? What DOES it all mean? Someone up there is playing tricks on us. That's what I think it means. Why else would so much about my life come bizarrely and unexpectedly full circle in the two weeks before I move across the country?


In any case, all that is to say, I'm looking up at the full moon right now, shaking my head and smiling, and I miss you.

Today I was sitting in my bed and then running around spending money and doing small rituals, tending to things, making my room more of a nest, buying a sweater, not trying to pay until I got off the 2 going back uptown, establishing some things that I like in the co-op that I now frequent...I was doing these things and thinking about how this is my life now, and how going back to Buffalo to visit will feel so wonderful when it happens, but going back to live there again would leave me feeling just as unanchored as moving anywhere leaves you feeling, at first. A place becomes yours in some deep way when you live there and it is always unalterably that when you go back there, but trying to reinsert yourself, to build a life somewhere, is alienating for some time to begin with always, even if you have already lived in that place, even if it is already yours, even and perhaps especially if you have ghost selves and lives walking those streets.