#1 - Vermont / finding light switches / tiny islands

I want to tell you where I've been while I've been away

To old and new friends,

Thanks for being here. I’m sorry if we haven’t talked in a while - I’ve been away. I spent the first weeks of the year in Johnson, Vermont in residency, where I spent a lot of time watching and waiting for things to change (or not). I’m talking about the light from the window moving across the room over the course of an afternoon. Sheets of ice forming on the river. The dryer spinning. The electric fireplace crackling but you never have to replace the wood.

And then I noticed absences. That one dry rectangle in the snow-covered parking lot. Where’s Lucia? My hair is short now and my ears feel cold. The very last morning when I went to Harlan’s office but he wasn’t there.

I spent the whole train ride back to New York almost crying. Almost missing everything. And I thought to myself that this entire last year I was just learning to hold myself back. Maybe not on Twitter but everywhere else now. My therapist said I needed to slow down and not jump to conclusions so I did. And I took the train home instead of the plane and I was bored and I did miss everything. I wish I told you.

All this is to say that I’m back in Chicago but not exactly home. To be honest with you I actually don’t have a home anymore but two storage units. Also many beds and couches to crash on. I feel loved but unanchored, I hope that’s okay to admit. I’m still struggling to find the light switches in the dark.

I worked almost nonstop this past week because I need money and to be occupied. I edited a short film where a tortured artist whips himself on the kitchen floor, projection designed a puppet show (the puppet dreams of waves), and met one of my biggest TV crushes - on an ice rink no less.

So: heading off again in a few days, this time to an island in Washington and I will be mostly alone. I can’t wait to be close to the ocean again though I did have to give up my dream of becoming a marine biologist due to inexcusable motion sickness. I actually grew up on a tiny island if you didn’t know and by tiny perhaps I meant dense. Perhaps I meant desperate. I will be updating you when I get back.

Ruby

I saw this on my last night in Vermont when we were all saying goodbye to and hugging each other like third graders about to go on summer break, and it almost made me cry (but just almost)