February Jitters

I've always wanted place to be important in my life, but it never has. The first chance I had to move from Long Island, I boarded a plane to Portland, OR to attend Reed College without ever having visited. I was sure the Pacific Northwest was where I belonged. I liked cloudy days (I thought.) Once I got there, though, I couldn't stop talking about New York, as if I had grown up in the city and not in its suburbs. I never understood why I talked about the city incessantly. I had gone in on weekends to jazz clubs and museums, but it wasn't a central part of my life growing up. I went months at a time without visiting.

A year and a half later, I convinced Evan to study in Florence with me. We rented a studio apartment and attended an American school where he studied studio art and I read Italian literature in translation. I wanted to love the country, but I spent a lot of time alone in our apartment, waiting for Evan to come home from his studio. I never learned Italian. I never became attached to the city. One of our last days there, I went to a bakery and struggled to order a loaf of bread in Italian. The girl behind the counter was nice, but frustrated with me. I was still a foreigner.

The next semester I started attending NYU and moved to a dorm on 26th Street. I'm still here in the city, living uptown, but I wonder if it's convenience that keeps me. I don't hate the city. I don't struggle with it. I'm not sure I have any sort of relationship with it at all. I occasionally take advantage of some of what it has to offer, but I don't know that I would be any different were I living somewhere else.

Lately I've started believing that traveling by myself will help me figure this all out. I have plane tickets to visit Carrie in London over Easter weekend, but at work I price trips to Central America, fantasize about giving up my apartment and roaming around a little. Maybe I've spent too much time feeling at home. Maybe being lonely in a foreign city will jump start something in me.

What I want it to 'jump start,' of course, is writing more (better) poetry. I don't know that this will happen. I think for the most part I write better when my life is more settled. I've only recently figured out that a full life doesn't always result in great literature. Some people are better at being observers. I think I may be one of them.