A long time coming
Sorry for the absence. I don't know who, exactly, I'm apologizing to. Myself, maybe. Because I know that I have a tendencey to be conspicuously absent, to disappear without regret. And maybe I'm tired of not regretting.
I nearly abandoned this journal for a new one, a new journal to go with my new life. And then I wondered what would have been the point of keeping it in the first place, if I just gave up on it, as if it didn't matter anymore. Nothing, really. It would be a relic of a person I played at being for a few years before returning home. And I know that my time in California was more than a series of vignettes. And it's getting harder and harder to remember. I spend my days now with people who know virtually nothing of the person I was there, and it's not easy to fuse the two selves together. I've never really tried to do that before. I've dumped selves, left them behind. I've never tried to carry one with me from place to place. And it's strange. But then again, I've always been a little strange anyway. What's a little extra baggage?
I am sitting in a coffee shop in a town I don't know - a town I decidedly do not like - that has a ceiling painted with the universe, stars and moons and planets. There is terrible art on the walls. And it isn't home. It only serves a placeholder for all the coffee shops I've loved in towns I've loved - the tiny coffee shop owned by the strange German professor in Natchitoches (and later, the P.J.s where Sarah and I would walk from her house on the river); Highland Coffees and the C.C.s in Baton Rouge that is no longer open, the one around the corner from my house where we went after school let out on Friday afternoons; Coffee Roasters (aka See's) in Riverside - with its resident one-cup-all-day-espresso-drinking Asian guy and loud funny baristas; Casbah. Psychobabble. Afternoons with Erika a walk around the block from our apartment. Even the f-ing Starbucks in Shreveport was better than being here.
It's funny to me to realize how much those places stand in for stories, and how barren of stories Dallas (my home, for now) seems to be. Nothing in Dallas is original. Nothing. Around every corner is a set of big box stores (WAY more than any town in California, if you can imagine, even more than Riverside or Corona or San Bernardino). The apartments are lovely but all look about the same. The people are heavyset Republicans who insist on referring to J.D. (the boyfriend) as my husband, despite my lack of ring and near-constant reference to him as my boyfriend.
I need to be writing again, to remind myself that I HAVE stories. Everything for now seems mired in the moment, in the practical and everyday. We need to finish moving. I need to find a job. We need to eat better, need to exercise. I have never been good at the everyday; nearly everyone who knows me recognizes this. But it's time to grow up, I guess, and figure out how to live a little bit outside of my head and inside the practicalities of daily life.
Still, I think maybe I'll use this journal to stay inside my head a little, to keep telling myself stories. Maybe it will make Dallas a little more tolerable. I'll fill that strange blank space with myself, with the things I miss. And six months, or seven, will pass quickly.
I nearly abandoned this journal for a new one, a new journal to go with my new life. And then I wondered what would have been the point of keeping it in the first place, if I just gave up on it, as if it didn't matter anymore. Nothing, really. It would be a relic of a person I played at being for a few years before returning home. And I know that my time in California was more than a series of vignettes. And it's getting harder and harder to remember. I spend my days now with people who know virtually nothing of the person I was there, and it's not easy to fuse the two selves together. I've never really tried to do that before. I've dumped selves, left them behind. I've never tried to carry one with me from place to place. And it's strange. But then again, I've always been a little strange anyway. What's a little extra baggage?
I am sitting in a coffee shop in a town I don't know - a town I decidedly do not like - that has a ceiling painted with the universe, stars and moons and planets. There is terrible art on the walls. And it isn't home. It only serves a placeholder for all the coffee shops I've loved in towns I've loved - the tiny coffee shop owned by the strange German professor in Natchitoches (and later, the P.J.s where Sarah and I would walk from her house on the river); Highland Coffees and the C.C.s in Baton Rouge that is no longer open, the one around the corner from my house where we went after school let out on Friday afternoons; Coffee Roasters (aka See's) in Riverside - with its resident one-cup-all-day-espresso-drinking Asian guy and loud funny baristas; Casbah. Psychobabble. Afternoons with Erika a walk around the block from our apartment. Even the f-ing Starbucks in Shreveport was better than being here.
It's funny to me to realize how much those places stand in for stories, and how barren of stories Dallas (my home, for now) seems to be. Nothing in Dallas is original. Nothing. Around every corner is a set of big box stores (WAY more than any town in California, if you can imagine, even more than Riverside or Corona or San Bernardino). The apartments are lovely but all look about the same. The people are heavyset Republicans who insist on referring to J.D. (the boyfriend) as my husband, despite my lack of ring and near-constant reference to him as my boyfriend.
I need to be writing again, to remind myself that I HAVE stories. Everything for now seems mired in the moment, in the practical and everyday. We need to finish moving. I need to find a job. We need to eat better, need to exercise. I have never been good at the everyday; nearly everyone who knows me recognizes this. But it's time to grow up, I guess, and figure out how to live a little bit outside of my head and inside the practicalities of daily life.
Still, I think maybe I'll use this journal to stay inside my head a little, to keep telling myself stories. Maybe it will make Dallas a little more tolerable. I'll fill that strange blank space with myself, with the things I miss. And six months, or seven, will pass quickly.