Leave-taking

I’m buzzed on cheap white wine and the heady smell of wood smoke drifting in from a bonfire two or three houses down. This is essential.

I am a person invested in ritual; in the deliberate gestures (both small and great) that allow us to make meaning for ourselves in the world. I considered carefully how I might mark the end of my time in this small city. I would be on my own, as I was when I arrived. This too, seems essential.

The first summer we were here, we were the only tenants in the building. We ran wild, charging up and down the stairs, sliding down the banisters, and wandering out to the parking lot to dance under the moon. Moody made origami sunflowers for me, and we walked along the river, pointing out muskrats and herons to one another. It was hot—like this summer has been—and we slept on the porch, searching for a breeze, trying to keep cool. In the two weeks I spent alone after moving in (before Moody arrived) I felt like an intruder, sleeping on the sofa when our bed felt too big for me alone. Together we were at home, and when I am old and grey, I will remember the first summer.

In many ways, this summer has been a strange echo of that one. Since Moody went ahead to Manhattan, I’ve wandered around like a ghost, spackling and sanding, packing and painting. Nothing is sufficient. So I sit on our sun porch, searching for a breeze in the hot night, watching the lights turn on and off in the cell-like rooms of the hotel across the way. They reflect in the slow black river, trembling gold and orange—the night’s only stars.

Somewhere (in rooms inside of rooms inside of rooms inside me) there is a 12-year-old girl, howling for another home left behind. This is the longest I’ve lived in one place since I was six years old, and that is something. Onward.

THROW YOUR LIFE AWAY (Or Just The Parts You Don't Need Anymore)

There’s this steamer trunk I’ve had since middle school. It’s grey and crooked like an old elephant, and it’s covered in an unfortunate sticker hodgepodge representing various phases and causes and foreign countries I may or may not have visited. There are terrifying “meat is murder” PETA ones, a Harley Davidson flag, and a Scottish coat of arms. There’s a Beatles sticker I got in Liverpool, and a Berlin sticker I found in Poughkeepsie. The trunk lives in the back corner of my sun porch. One of the wheels broke off the last time I moved, so one end rests slightly higher than the other. If you set a round object on it, the object will roll. Cylinders, when placed on their sides, will also roll.

Periodically, I open this steamer trunk, and evaluate the contents. There are photos of my grandparents when they were young, my graduation caps from high school and college, concert tickets, museum pamphlets, valentines, and every beer bracelet I’ve ever gotten. Last summer, my boyfriend worked an early morning shift, and I’d wake up to a note or a drawing EVERY SINGLE DAY. They’re all in there. The corsage my best friend from high school (who turned out to be gay) gave me for our first dance is in there. The New York Times from the morning after Obama was elected. My hospital bracelet from the time I almost cut my finger off at Vassar. A headless, shapeless “Nefertiti Statue” I whittled out of clay when I was ten. Basically, it’s all in there.

Today I opened up the trunk for the first time in more than a year. It’s a strange thing to look at your life condensed and so selectively. Like, I hated high school, but it all looks very pleasant in material retrospect.

I’m happy to have most of what’s in my trunk, but during this particular evaluation, I was very much bothered by all of the shiny plastic trophies. We really need to stop rewarding kids for perfect attendance. I went to school with pneumonia more than once for the sake of those darn trophies. MORE THAN ONCE.

Flute trophies, math trophies, history trophies. SO MUCH PLASTIC. I was even “MOST IMPROVED” in my kiddie soccer league, because I learned where on the field I should be standing when I was playing “offence” versus when I was playing “defense”. Annnnnnnnnnnd there was a trophy for it.

So, basically, I am laden with plastic trophies I will never display, and probably (definitely) didn’t deserve. WHY DID I BRING THESE TO GRAD SCHOOL WITH ME? They might be made of plastic, but cumulatively, they are. So. Freaking. Heavy. I should apologize to my stepfather and brother-in-law for bringing these trophies with me to Rochester. They were carried up many stairs.

Picking through my trunk, I suddenly HAD to purge them. I have no idea why it hadn’t occurred to me sooner, but once I started throwing genie-lamp-shaped “BEST CURSIVE WRITER” trophies away, lots of other things fell into the trash bag vortex. Drawings I did of mermaids when I was eight, with their chests covered by mint green clam shells. GONE. An eye patch from the Pirates’ Cove mini golf course in Lake George. GONE. Dry, rotten carnation corsage. GONE (sorry Michael, it was gross). Picture-day pictures from the most awkward years of my life. GONE GONE GONE. Oh, and the beer bracelets.

Holy cannoli, it felt DAMN good to get rid of these things. Why do we hold on to so much STUFF? I’m not even talking about photos. I’m talking about stuff. The horrible little knickknack-y things we can’t stand to throw away but really really REALLY just need to throw away.

Throw that shit away. I highly recommend it.

But neon pink Vassar FannyPack, I AM KEEPING YOU.

Little Town, Big Hearts

I'll admit it, I couldn't wait to get out of my home town. Tooooooo small for this kid. But the first weekend in March is better in South Glens Falls than anywhere else. For 35 years, my little high school has been marathon-dancing its way to almost three million dollars, which goes to sick local children, halfway houses, families in need, and so many others. Last year we raised over $326,000. This year, I have a feeling it will be even more. Check it out the website, make a donation, and watch the live video feed here. And read CNN's coverage here.

UPDATE:

And the grand total is..... $395,352.19

Way to go Bulldogs!

Notes From A Very Strange Place

After Vassar, 600 or so 21-year-olds sit, spread over thousands of miles, wondering what the fuck just happened. College is bizarre. The price of an education is a front for what it costs to step out of time, to freeze it, or maybe just to tweak the part of your brain that minds its passage. You look older, and so do I, but where did the time go, and why do I miss you?

I'm lucky, because my very favorite piece of Vassar packed up his stuff and came with me to Rochester. So there are two of us sitting in a room, wondering what the fuck just happened. I don't know who he's missing. But there's someone I used to eat lunch with at my desk in the art gallery every Tuesday. And there's someone who used to beg me to climb out and sit with him on this huge fallen tree limb over the gorge by his town house. There's the person who bought me my very first Starbucks coffee and the one who used to run around in a Gumby costume. And, hot damn, I miss them. You can call and email and type out pithy Facebook posts till the world ends, but it's an abstraction of what's over.

This is why I'm getting a PhD. More time-freezing. Sort of.

You, and Everyone You've Ever Known

I'm thinking a lot about the people in my life, the ones who were there a year ago, or ten, and the ones who have come back into it after a long absence, and the ones I know won't. Our lives are so circular. Sometimes it's just time to part ways with people, and places, and, to a certain extent I think that fate takes care of you; when people drift out of your life, new ones come in and spackle up those cracks. Does anything ever really end? I don't think so. I will forever cut sandwiches diagonally because my best friend from elementary school (with whom I lost contact years and years ago) told me it was bad juju to do it down the middle. Giraffes remind me of the first boy I ever fell for. A friend I worked with at Ralph Lauren last summer sent me a sunflower ring in the mail a few weeks ago. She's back home in Mexico now, and it's unlikely we'll cross paths again, but she was a much-appreciated ally, and now I have something to remind me of her. People don't ever really disappear.

A friend pointed out to me the other day that the number of people we "keep" when we leave Vassar will probably be a lot smaller than we think right now, but that those people, however few, will be the ones worth keeping. Isn't that sad, and sweet, and scary? All at the same time.

You know that final scene in Y tu mamá también, when Tenoch and Julio meet for coffee and realize they don't really have anything to say to one another anymore? They've had this epic, life-altering adventure together that only the two of them can understand, and still, a cup of coffee and Luisa's death are the only things holding them together. They never see each other again. I wonder what will hold the people I love here together once "here" doesn't mean what it does now.

Ten Things I Have Learned About The Sea

I grew up on stories of selkies. If you cry seven tears into the sea, I was told, your selkie will appear. He'll (or, more traditionally, "she'll") shed his seal-skin and walk on land with you, and you will love each other. But he will stay on land only for as long as you can hide his skin, because even great love cannot compare to the lure of the sea. And to keep him, you have to live with his longing for it.

I love the sea. When I leave a beach, I usually weigh almost twice as much as normal...what with the 100+ pounds of seashells in my pockets. I love the too-much-sand and too-much-salt and too-much-sun-ness of it all. I love the way the sea smells and the way it sounds, and the way, as Lorenzo Fonda says in his video short, it's the greatest mirror; when you're happy, the sea seems happy. When you're sad, the sea seems sad.

ten things i have learned about the sea from lorenzo fonda on Vimeo.

Lorenzo Fonda, 2008

Someday I'll pick a direction and drive until I end up at the ocean.

P.S. Happy Day. I just got my acceptance to URochester's phD program. Doctorate in Art History, Here. I. Come.

There's No Place Like Home

It's strange how things and people and places you thought were in your past can creep up and return to you. I have't been home in a year, but right now all I want is to head north, take Exit 17 off the highway, and hug my best friend.

On Saturday another South High senior committed suicide, bringing the total number of tragic deaths in my hometown up to 8 in the past year and a half. I keep trying to rationalize it, to separate it from the place I'm in and the people I know now, but it keeps coming back. Karmically, I wish the kids who go there now could catch a break: on March 4, the school held its 34th Annual Marathon Dance, raising $326, 213.58 in one night for local charities and individuals in need. I danced in that Marathon for all four years I was there, and it remains one of the best things I've ever done. Those kids are golden, and I think they deserve a little goodness.

SHMD 2011 Web Promo from Joshua Jacobs on Vimeo.

(Check out more on Marathon Dance at shmd.org)

Right now my heart hurts for everyone in that town. Sending my love.

The Art of Fort-Building

Everyone should engage in fort-building. Do it with somebody you like. Make sure you have twinkle-lights. Make sure you crawl inside and stay for a while.

Snow forts are also very nice.