new home and old letters

Sarasota was a wonderful change of pace.  Seemed like people worried I might find it too strange and alienating.  While I feel this way about the hormonal 18-year-olds, this is nothing new.  The city was small and quiet and so slow.  The breeze was going and the air was light.  I didn't feel its density coating my skin and lungs.  I sat and marveled quite a bit at not hearing anything at all.  And campus was fine, too, though I kept thinking that I saw a friend or acquaintance from 2 years ago . . . I think this may persist even after I've moved down.  It makes sense to some degree -- New College attracts certain stock characters -- but perhaps this is also the strange landscape of my memory, which will be peopled by those foregone . . . 

I just wanted to write foregone.

Before that, I spent the weekend on my bed leafing through old pictures and diaries.  I talked about boys a lot.  And I found poems I'd written.  I remembered how I wanted to be a writer; I realized I wasn't so bad and really I should start writing again.  But everything back then was so big.  Like I seriously wrote about truth and beauty and knowledge in my diary!  I'm now much more concerned with specific stretch marks or stains on my clothing.  I guess you could say I've gotten more specific, which seems about right.

It was great to see friends in Florida, and odd to know that I also have this full life in New York that I'm leaving.  And that my body will have no more referents that have so nicely mapped my days -- walking blocks, crossing streets, traveling on subways.  I came to take certain lengths of anonymity for granted.  They sheltered me, and paced me, and now I have to absorb new routines, acclimate my body to places and faces more familiar.  We'll see how that goes.

For now, I'm set to watch the last episode of Six Feet Under and hobble back home sometime in the late evening.  Then just about one more week here and I have no clue what to do with that.  I don't think I'll get it while I'm here.

There's so much more to say.