Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Time passes slowly when you´re searching for love

I let a long time go by without writing. Time has been passing in a funny way. On one hand I am busy, starting to see the end of my time here, happy about it, concerned to make sure all the money gets spent, all the workshops get planned, all the things I said I might do at one time or anonother get done, or at least there is the possibility of someone else to step in and do them. On the other hand, I have to stop and appreciate the fact that my life is relatively calm, certainly in comparison to the life I had in New York. And I have to really acknowledge the fact everyday that my circle of friends is much more fully knit and populated by extraordinarily affectionate people than anywhere else I have lived. I mean, my friends in New York are wonderful, but in New York, everyone else is so wrapped up in their own life, and you just see people with so much less frecuency that you function much more independently and alone there. I was explaining to someone who loves Friends that really that kind of community, where everyone just finds each other in the coffee shop and the apartment, doesn´t really exist in New York. Here it kind of does. In contrast to how I what I might have said in moments in the past, lately I have really felt like my life, my story here has become part of the story of several other people. And taking yourself home to cry or nurse your wounds without anyone noticing is a lost cause, because nothing is really all that private here. I get my feelings hurt by one person, I get set up with someone who shows no sign of biting (as in no interest) but before I can really allow myself to get too bothered by it I have my friend Esteban in my kitchen waxing philosophical on how to meet every day with excitement, instead of with the dreadful panic that I will be alone forever only because that is how it seems in this moment.

So what to do with this revelation? The idea that I found a community here that make me feel, not always, but from time to time, simply happy. Simply happy to find myself here among that people I have come to know.

Try to replicate this in the next place I go?

Not move back to New York?

Stay longer?

Move on to something else that might not be so far away?

In moments of frustration, some of my well-being of late has been predicated on the fact that I have begun to Make Plans, to think about the Next Thing. To Submit Resumes. And that the beginning of leave taking is what is provoking all this nostalgia.

Dunno. I have to think about it more.