this began as an email to jay.
You said that when you wake up you have a sense of impending doom. The last three weeks, waking up on what I describe as "my bed in my room" and my friend David describes as "a cot in a small room with bars on the windows" in Dubuque, Williamsburg, Brooklyn (Dubuque- Down Under the BQE) (Williamsburg- everyone thinks I am talking about Virginia), I feel as if I am on the verge of something wonderful. I have three roommates and a cat. Carlos lives around the corner. There is an organic grocery store. Boys from Ivy league schools tell me I am beautiful and so smart for someone who went to a state college. I have joined a Proust reading group. My new haunt is Barcade, where I can drink Dead Guy Ale almost for free while my friends obsess over Frogger and Donkey Kong and Ms. Pac-Man (she was a feminist, I think).
The Verge of something wonderful. In San Sebastian, lying topless on a beach with three women I have come to count as my closest and wisest of companions, the Virgin Mary watched over us from the top of the church on the hill. The Verge, we called her, The Verge is keeping an eye out for us. We had a beautiful weekend, the museum in Bilbao and the only macrobiotic food in northern Spain. When I came to New York I replaced The Verge with the Statue of Liberty. I keep a photograph of my grandmother next to my bed and tell people that she watches me while I sleep. For someone who prattles on about her independence, there is a remarkable comfort in a wise older woman showing you the way.
I miss you. My friend Jenny is studying in Scotland right now and she sent me the nicest letter, saying she didn't miss Greensboro but that she missed my Greensboro. My Greensboro is still luminous. I miss my old apartment, not to mention my old rent. But Brooklyn is home. Nothing is replaceable. On Tuesday nights I go to Barcade with my new crowd rather than NYP with my old one, but it isn't a matter of substitution, saying that some person is the new you. The truth is, I live here now. I don't just have an apartment here, I have a circle of friends, favorite places to go, a sense of direction, a series of odd jobs, the real stuff of habitation. I no longer cry when I see Greensboro on television, I light up and point to things and say that I know exactly where they are. I know exactly where you are right now. You sent me the photograph of you at your desk, ponytailed and grinning. I may not know where I am right now except for "on the verge," but I know exactly where you are.