We Don't Try

When I'm holed up in my self-absorbed bubbledom, it's really easy to forget how important friends are and how accessible happiness can be. It's hard when your life isn't following the path you've carved out for it to flow into...when it seeps into awkward cracks in the sooted sidewalk. I've been packing for weeks. Things keep appearing...heavy pointy things mostly. Meanwhile, I've cut off two knuckles, managed to burn my thumb white with a lit match, and wisely decided to get a wrist tattoo a week before leaving New York. I do love New York though. This week, I went to Sylvia's in Harlem...where I've wanted to go since I read Francesca Lia Block in middle school. I think it was Witch Baby, maybe? I ate chicken and waffles. Then my friends (Saskia and Joe and Joe's cousin) and I went to Korea Town...which is actually just two blocks. Apparently people are eating panda in New York...as unlikely as that seems. Some of the swankier clubs didn't readily welcome whiteys but we managed drunkeness and ate Korean barbeque and kimchee. It was fun to visit parts of New York most people don't bother to visit I guess. I have no regrets of leaving...but I suppose regrets are one of those things that hit you after the fact. I don't know. I have no idea how I'm going to manage a cross-country trip in a week. I have so many tidbits, Weetzie might go nuts, and it might take four days. So...obviously, my mind is all over the place. I'm kinda really excited to get to Santa Fe though! And erm, not just because I'm still in love with my ex boyfriend and may or may not want to trick/convince him to move to Los Angeles with me. It's also cause my best friend Alex is there now and if my ex won't have me, I won't be left to my drunken self! So, back to packing the knives.

Finding My Way...Away

"One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourself out. Be as I am-a reluctant enthusiast... a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains. Run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to your body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards."—Edward Abbey

I've got little more than a week left in New York...and I'm already happier knowing there's a light at the end of my tunnel. Looking back at my old blogs and journals, it's apparent that I've been depressed more than I've been happy here. I've met a couple people who've made a huge impact in me in a short time. I've worked my ass off, sometimes in 3 jobs at a time, and I finally kinda feel proud of myself. At a Women's Writer's Conference in June, I had an epiphany; I can write anywhere! While I've been killing myself to be where the action is...I've kinda stopped caring about the action itself. I don't really know what's in store for me, but my priorities have changed and I'm looking forward to wide blue skies, close friends, and new adventures. I know—pure cheez. It's my first lapse of optimism ever, give me a break! In honor of my new found freedom, a quote from a little over a year ago, when the depression was nearly swallowed the both of us whole...is it troublesome that my writing is rubbish when I'm not an utter mess?

"Ah, the summer's hand lays heavy on this land and what is left of it suffocates the heavy-headed who can afford it. What is there to be excited about at this age? It's just like every other day but with excess sweat behind the knee caps and brow. Working the same jobs, holding out before the inevitable collapse. But for what? It's as if my body is going without me, pouring itself into everyday tasks without my mind...without that heart which remains tangled. So it appears that I will continue going ahead without it because I've been given no choice. My hand held out, you chose to push it away. So these days I carry on, somehow managing to push through sunrise day by day. For only just my arms are dancing marionettes. Surprised to wake up every morning...dumbfounded by some persistence I didn't know I had.

It's been 20 days since my last day off...only 3 more until the next. Editing for hours until I can leave to bartend at a restaurant of the unhinged...arriving home in the wee hours. Standing idly in a white sunlit store, writing for no extra money...pulling by bloody fingernails to the next job. Still left with barely enough money for rent. What for? So that I can afford to do what I love. To do it alone...because I've sacrificed something in pursuit of my only dream. I wanted this so badly. Here it is and it will take everything in me to keep it up. I will keep on wondering if I could have had the other life, if you would have let me stay. But in the meantime, I am here. Here in the humid, as vulnerable as always, perhaps more so. Imagining that one day I will pull out of this city, feeling that I've conquered something, move to the west coast...slowly through these states."