Being lonely (young, & restless)

I am sorry I do not write very often. I think of things to write, but then - it takes a lot to shape those thoughts, and I get overwhelmed with schoolwork, dishes, watching the trees, talking with my roommates...everyday life. But now I have so much schoolwork to do (finals are fast approaching), that I cannot fathom doing anything but writing to you.

I am a lonely person. This is not an attempt to be pitied. I enjoy loneliness - I have made it an everyday study. I like going to coffee shops and diners by myself. Movie theaters. I like getting lost in places alone. Every time I get to a new city I spend hours (sometimes days) wandering through unknown streets until it feels like...it's mine (note: this has been done in NY at 3 am...not exactly comfortable, especially in winter, but I can say I have sat at a cafe table in center of the city, in the dark, without once seeing a car... I also know a good place to fall asleep in Penn Station...)

Though Boston is a small city, it has provided me with a new place to travel through every year - its spiraling, paved cow paths offer what every lonely wanderer desires (no certain direction). It has been a hard place to love though. Not instinctively - the buildings still make me feel like I'm a part of something very old and new all at once; there is a certain belovedness in their motley make-up (strangely beautiful, especially from a bridge over the Charles) - but its indifference has been difficult to get used to. Boston is cold and other - entirely different from where I grew up in California. And I often feel so other in it. 

Ha ha - I know, I have obviously been writing too many college English essays when I describe myself as "other." Unfortunately, though, I am no better than any other cliche. Boston, because of its otherness, has been able to make me more of myself - you are forced to bloom as something when your surroundings are so dissimilar. 

I think all new places do this to a person (...make them bloom...ha ha). Or maybe I only want to believe that; I cling to traveling like lichen to a rock (I love terrible similes...get over it). I want to go everywhere - I think I think I will be able to discover myself in foreignness. Of course, in reality, it is never quite so romantic. It is painful to begin somewhere new. It is harrowing being entirely unknown. And, maybe, at times, it is only running away. I do not know. But I have been blessed with people I cherish everywhere I've gone - they have made me who I am, though I may not ever see or speak to them again. There is a sort of profound satisfaction in finding places and people you love, and have loved you, in unfamiliar hamlets.

We are all lonely really - throughout our lives the one person we spend the most time with is ourself (yes, let's be Modern. Of course with a capital M). Everything leaves and changes - I clearly have no idea what this means in my very obvious 21 years. But it seems that what makes us most is loss. 

(Sorry if I'm being pretentious/gloomy/ridiculous...it's in my make-up...ha ha...and I've been reading A LOT of modernist novels for class...I'll make sure to dig into some Vonnegut  for perspective over break...)

You've been young or you are young - I feel like it means to know nothing and want everything. Or perhaps it is only to know so little of everything. There is some deep resistence "to settle," to not give up our idealism, but the shape of the desire lacks definition, or realism, or only includes a false, entirely negative one. I am guessing it will become neither, but a combination of the dreams and the everyday - maybe a little like the assorted Boston landscape.


(I'm listening to Tracy Chapman...90s retro chick. Also been into the Corin Tucker Band lately.)