Of course I wouldn't be blogging if I didn't absolutely need to. No, for this I would some substantial incentive other than say, personal pride. How about a career choice? Maybe singling out undergraduate journalism electives will one day pay off in the big picture, real world kind of way. Ah maybe, but where's the urgency? Right, a procrastinator, well we'll just say its for the sake of self exploration then. That way it's non-committal for me, but rather obligatory, and essential.
First off let me just say I realize the irony. If i cant get this part right; recording and accurately portraying my own life, how am I supposed to be an authentic, ambitious, chip on the shoulder, naive, pain-in-the-ass journalist(some day). (?)
Getting it right was never about reporting facts with me, it was about capturing images. Like the one with me in the kitchen, steadily nodding along with the conversation as if she were sitting on the other side of that table, as if she could see me sitting there in my drab, unwashed sweatpants, wasting my good sweater not for the occasion, but for the open window and its late evening cold. The reality is, she's in Mexico, and im in the opening moments of what will become a classic hangover. She took a job there last month and said she'd be back in a year, making me promise not to forget her.
Having moved into her place and gotten a job near by I've now adopted the life I'm desperately hoping she'll come back to while trying not to forget the one I left behind. First of all, I love her. And its not just her, it's the idea behind her, I get it, this place and theses people. She lived with a lead singer of an indie rock band called Wheeler, an old buddy from high school. Now, of course, I live with him. We all had our connections, I lived with the other members of Wheeler for almost seven months before I started spending my nights with her. We met at one of their concerts at a bar on South Hennepin. She was beautiful and stood out amongst her friends, and even through the brightest shining lights of the stage. Fetching enough to pull eyes from all across the bar and tender hearted enough to let a gangly North Easterner buy her a drink. I didnt know if she knew these guys the same way I did, she probably knew em better, growing up with them in a small town, but I knew em different. I knew the bus eric took to get crosstown to the studio garage. I knew the alley where marc dumped our trash so as not to burden us all with the price of a weekly haul. And I knew the riff on third set that ryan, the drummer, wrote and donated to the band. These guys were my guys.
And when we did move out of that God-awful place in North East, (or Nordeast) It didnt take long to realize where I'd end up, or wanted to for that matter. "Her place" was just a way of saying how I felt about where things were going. We spent the entire summer exclusively dedicated to being with each other. We were both done with class for the summer, she a teacher and I a student. We had nothing to keep us from being the people we were in the city we were in. We shopped organic, we lived in the sun and supported independent action and expression. We went to parties, and watched old movies in the park. We saw art, we walked everywhere, and we watched our friends make music.
The thing is, she's gone now, and these are things Im not going to stop doing. I moved into her place in Uptown and I feel as though I'm just now becomming part of the community. Now I would explain to you what that means to me, but, I already have.
