nostalgia for the present

I’m moving to Berkeley in a month.  Berkeley and San Francisco are next door neighbors, but living next door is not the same as living in your very own lovely laughter-filled house.  I am going to leave mine, which I moved into so recently (six months, just).  Yesterday we had friends over to eat “gay cake” (rainbow-frosted) in celebration of Pride and warmth.  We sat around in the backyard drinking homemade mint lemonade and mimosas and eating food and talking and laughing.  At some point a guitar was brought and put to use.  The remnants of the party decided to make dinner, and we sat 10 people down for a feast just because we were all there and did not want to leave.  I tied an apron on to cook, and my friends in the dining room made up blues verses about each of us.  At dinner we argued and laughed and drank wine.  After dinner we cleaned up, crawled into bed.  My roommates came in to kiss me goodnight and gossip.  It was a glorious day.  

I won’t have a lot of days like that when fall hits.  There will be good moments, I am sure, and I know I will come back to my friends in the city.  But as a student, weekends are no longer enormous blocks of leisure time.  I will have to measure and worry and trade-off time.  It’s worth it; I am excited to do it; but days like yesterday remind me of what I’ll be missing for the next two years.

This is brought to the forefront of my mind due to the true beginning of my apartment search in Berkeley.  I went on Saturday and looked at three apartments, two of which were uninhabitable (one tiny, one too crowded by the residents of the adjoining house) and the third of which I would have to pay an extra half a month of rent for.  More will come, I know, but I am in the anxious stage now, where I don’t know where I will be in a month, I don’t know if this move will be an upgrade or a downgrade, and I am already nostalgic for the life I haven’t left yet.

moving

I didn’t know if I was ever going to write in this blog again, until just this moment.

I am moving tomorrow. Or the next day. Everything, as usual, is in flux. No, not usual. The last six months have been, by far, the most unsettled of my life. I have not had my own bed since June. I have lived out of a suitcase since June too, and not known exactly where I would be in a month, or what I would be doing there. Now my life is finally reordering itself. Tomorrow I am going to talk to my former boss about coming back to work full time. Tomorrow I am going to move my meager belongings into my beautiful new apartment. I am getting (almost) everything I wanted, when I was far away and dreaming of this moment. But no matter how happy I know I am, it is still difficult, the process of moving. I made a point not to really unpack in my current apartment – where I have been since the beginning of December – but still looking around my room at the piles I have created in lieu of shelves, I grow panicked, thinking of repacking it all away. I am only moving across town. I am going to live with wonderful friends, whom I love, in a neighborhood I love, in a beautiful apartment with plaster cherubs in the corners and fanciful chandeliers. I am thrilled. I am also shivering with tension. It’s almost impossible, facing an enormous task like beginning a life again, to imagine how quickly it will pass, how soon I will be on the other side, living the life I am (re)creating now.

the first time I have ever been pleased with a flight delay

Written 8/22 in the airport:

Yesterday morning I got up early and went to the Seattle airport to catch my flight to New Jersey. I had a planned layover of an hour in San Francisco and I’d fantasized that my second flight would be delayed and maybe I could have lunch with some of my former coworkers (the office is ten minutes from the airport). Well the airlines did me one better: my first flight (Seattle to San Francisco) was delayed and I missed my second flight altogether. The United personnel gave me a few options: I could take a red eye flight, leaving at 10 pm and getting into Newark at 6 am; I could fly through Chicago; or I could take a flight today. Waiting nine hours in the airport, making an extra connection even though it hurts to walk (sprained ankle), or spending a night in San Francisco with my friends? The decision was easy, to put it mildly.

What a wonderful day, in the way days in San Francisco are usually wonderful: I had lunch with my coworkers, as imagined; I sat in my old kitchen filled with afternoon light; I had seasonal local vegetables for dinner in a hip diner; I ate an ice cream cone; I had a few beers. Of course the reason all of these things were so wonderful is that I did them with my friends. My lovely, smart, funny friends who welcomed me back with open arms. How marvelous to pop in for a day and rejoin my life (almost) as if I never left. I know three months is different than three weeks, and when I come back for good some things will have changed. But the fundamentals will remain: good people, good food, good life.

In the meantime, I am excited to start campaigning. Two people at the Seattle airport yesterday told me they thought we had two bad choices in the presidential race. What are you talking about? I wanted to cry (but didn’t due to an inability to marshal arguments in a state of extreme exhaustion as well as a desire to disengage). Can’t you see that Obama is different than the candidates that have come before? Sure he has his problems. He is human, and he makes bad choices sometimes; he is a politician, and he makes political choices sometimes. But he is smart. He understands nuance. He has good, detailed policy positions. He ran a brilliant and well-organized primary campaign. And he is a fresh start. Electing a mixed-race man named Barack Obama is a rejection of the politics of fear and division that we have lived with for the last eight years (longer, really). He can’t fix everything that has gone wrong under Bush, but he will make a good start – better than anyone else I can imagine.

the difficult part

I went to see a psychic today. She told me that I had three past lives, and in each life I was ripped away from my home (kidnapped or something similar) and in each case, I was never able to return. That is why, now, I am feeling so much grief and sadness even though my life is good. I have left home, and I don’t know if I’ll go back.

But: I left of my own free will, and I am going to do something exciting and worth doing. I am going to try, in whatever way I can, to help elect Barack Obama. And after that happens, then I can choose to go home (in the process healing my karmic debt!).

I’m not sure I believe the past lives part, but the process of leaving San Francisco has been harder than it should have been. There are many (more mundane) reasons: I fell and sprained my ankle moving out, I am confused and sad about a relationship I left behind, my car was stolen from the street where I was supposed to leave it safely parked for three months, etc. But these are all circumstantial, and I can deal with them.

The difficult part is the difficult part for all twenty-three year olds (at least in our culture of overabundant choices): I am in the process of figuring out what I want and what I need, and what the difference is between those two things. I want to be in San Francisco, in my old apartment, in my own comfy bed (ideally with my ex feeding me chocolates) but I don’t need that. I need to be proud of my president (or I need to find a new country of residence). I want to change, I want to stay the same. I need to let go, I need to hold on. I need to feel at home. I want to make home wherever I go. In short: I am confused and in my confusion I make decisions and sometimes I regret them more than I think I will.

Or maybe it really is about my past lives. Who knows?

This post this is just to say: I am here. I am going to New Jersey in a day and a half to see what I can do for the campaign there, or anywhere else anyone wants me. (If you are hiring for positions on the campaign: I am unemployed, and hardworking, and hopeful. Also, I do not go to see psychics on a regular basis.)

This blog may not be updated frequently. Depending on what I end up doing for the next few months, it will contain writing about some combination of: grassroots campaign work, current (political) events, writing, and my personal life and feelings. I will try to label appropriately.