Returning

Whenever I leave New York for a long period of time, coming back is strange. People I had transient, fleeting friendships with at the end of the last block of time seem to have faded away. I have no rehearsals to whine about yet--not enough homework to wither up inside of. I do this thing where I like to PLAN: I'll hoarde up on applications for summer projects, volunteer for events, consider things that will only affect me months and months from now. I am ill at ease.

It scares me a little how unsafe and unstable former familiarity feels--how much harder it becomes to reach out and connect with people and events and even attitudes after so much time away from them has lapsed. And then there's the fact that my life changed a little a few weeks ago, in a small but important way, in Miami. I keep thinking about people I met there. I miss them.

Studio, and writing, and leaving my apartment, and boys (as ever, those boys) make me want to sneak back to Maryland when no one is watching. This is why I hate first dates and first days of anything--the only good beginnings happen in literature. I like feeling newness after two days' validation! I do not like feeling afraid; especially of things I was not afraid of three weeks ago. That word 'returning' even seems to suggest a kind of fatal repetition in the act of "coming back": it's not making anything new, it's not written as joy, it means to repeat a certain thing. Repeat turning...new...corners. Is a stretch.