I come to salem and everything gets very serious. suddenly I'm grocery shopping and cooking, really cooking, and trying to live off $30 a week for everything. I do dishes and sweep and clean and sit in coffeeshops with gelato and my sketchpad. twenty-five renderings a week. I take emergency trips home and lie to bus drivers and never pay full fare to boston. I wear sneakers. I skip friday classes to drive to pennsylvania in the dark to visit my grandfather, for the last time? we're already planning christmas, and easter, but it's with the tentative hope of a family who can't grieve again this year.

I see miles every weekend, counting down till december. we smile with closed eyes and talk about the future. that's all I do now. talk about what will happend after these three (four? five?) magical years when everything falls into place and I can be a costume designer or a book-on-tape-recorder or meterologist or whatever it is I figure out.

so what am I doing? I'm living week to week and finding symbolism in english lit. saphron, elia tells us. there's beauty in balance, in suffering.

here's to the fall.

ash @ 8:52 PM