7.3.06

it's been a month. in these past weeks, i have done the following things:

got roaringly sick all at once during baccalaureate. sweated through commencement in a black polyester bag in ninety degree weather with a fever. proceeded to cough for a month (still coughing).

graduated. right.

learned to drive stick. this was made additionally stressful by the fact that i had to learn it well enough to parallel park on the hill by my apartment in four days.

got involved with a u-haul.

went to express care where i cried and got narcotics.

lived and ate out of boxes, fully engaging in the starvation diet (round two).

seen a lot of danielle, who is elementally herself and likely always will be. she's been a good friend to me on a basic level these past few weeks (taking me out to dinner, inviting me out to the old port with her engineer friends too late one night and immediately understanding why my already having showered was a truly legitimate reason for not wanting to go).

finally, started work. actually did that about three days after the adventure in express care and the advent of narcotics. i still don't know what i think about it. it changed everything so completely it'll take me til at least september to catch up. in the meantime, i work with good people. i've somehow ended up a member of a creative team in maine, of all places. usually one has to move to boston for that sort of thing. if my boss was thirty years younger, we'd be good friends. as it stands, i almost (but not quite) look forward to seeing him everyday.

thoughts from the past weeks, most still relevant:

i live in an old apartment. i'm not really made to do this. its bright, cheery, and full of colorful art. still, it's old. there's only one outlet in every room. closing doors is an exercise in problem solving. i constantly have the impression that everything isn't quite clean regardless of the number of times i wipe it down.

on the other hand, i live in an apartment full of art where a sea breeze is constantly blowing through the windows. i live a thousand or so yards from my favorite kind of beach and pay four fifty a month rent. i'm continually surprised to realize i'm making a solid living based solely on syllables and ideas, definitionally empty things. could be a lot worse.

i've got no people. my roommate is fifty seven (wouldn't have it any other way) and everyone i work with is in at least their early thirties, if not mid fifties. the people floating around portland in my age group don't see me because i'm not wearing the right clothes (the right clothes being unemployed hipsterwear). i don't have the energy to do much about the isolation right now. it's a strange and exhausting situation.

inconveniently, it appears i'm wanting a partner more than i thought i was. recovery from jon happened quickly enough, well-placed as we were for a split. i honestly had no idea i was ready for anything else after the emotional exhaustion of that year and a half. this is the first time i've been incorrect about myself in memory.

all in all, this is not the best time to be invisible in a new city. my outlook is moorlessly numb, punctuated with the knowledge that the situation will eventually change. i've got the same sense i had curled up in bed in edinburgh, reading jane austen novels: i can't imagine how i'll ever manage to interact normally in a relationship again. i also have no doubt it will go off without a hitch when it's time.

the athiest version of the feeling that god will provide is really just an awareness of the constancy of change.