and now that i've managed to compose myself a tad...

last week, i went home for the first time in three years. and it was different, this homecoming. to pick up a theme recently put out there by our little owl, this is a tale of two shivvies with which we're dealing here. an exercise in stark relief.

the last time i was home was december of 2001. it was my first christmas out of school, my first holiday since surviving the grueling hell that was the summer of 2001, the shell shock of my first real job, and (of course) the utter mindfuck that was september 11 (three days after i started my job, no less--"welcome to the working class! here's the end of the world!"). i was in love with someone who couldn't care less (pattern, anyone) and had recently cut loose the faithful and wonderful boyfriend of the preceding two years. i had recently discovered the restorative and healing powers of alcohol. i'd managed to conquer the eating disorder by that time, but i was still a complete and utter train wreck.

the vacation, if i recall correctly, was like familiar landscape filtered through the sickly light of a winter dawn--beautiful, and pleasant, and familiar, but ultimately too cold to thoroughly enjoy. we were all shell-shocked that year. friends, family, everyone. we were ourselves, but only ghosts thereof. we were interacting with each other through saran wrap, and i couldn't wait to get back here to new york.

i was myself, only stranger.

going home this year was so different; i felt less like a shadow slipping home and more like a technicolor fever dream returning to roost. things were no longer sepia toned and sepulchral; the sun was bright, and everything exciting and yet familiar. i suppose that's what happens when you finally start to feel like you've got your life together; home becomes less of a default retreat and fortress and more like something alive and integral--this is the place that i CAME from. this is part of what makes me ME. liking the "ME" that i've become is the basis of this transformation in perception this time round; a subtle but imperative difference.

this was dom's first trip to the bay area, and i have never delighted in it so much as i did with him these last few days. the weather gods were with us the first two days, allowing us high temperatures and brilliant skies as we rode cable cars and ate sourdough in san francisco, looked reverently at the ludicrously ancient redwoods and had a nostalgia trip on the beach where i'd passed so much of my misspent youth. we met up with some of my friends from high school, some of the brightest, most creative and wonderful people i've ever known, and whom i always forget how much i miss. i didn't manage to bring him to the coffee shop that had been my home away from home, nor did i get to show him all the landmarks in my life, but i gave a decent sampling. he knows where i come from now, more or less.

going home made me realize a handful of conflicting things, the first being that it's difficult to go home properly when your mother has given away your bed and turned your bedroom into a closet, but it can be done. the second is that a good dive bar requires more than big moustaches and a questionable jukebox--there's a certain panache required to make it work in a city where the population of harley owners is lower than the population of vintage vw beetle owners. the third is that however much we grow up, no matter what we go through and how we change, in certain respects we are always going to be the same--my friends will always find it difficult to make plans simply, and i'll always be reduced to the age of fifteen in the face of my mother. fortunately, modern mobile technology and improved self-esteem can ease the trouble wrought by this very fact.