June 6, 2012

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  I woke up at 4 a.m. because my bedroom was lit up like a disco. The storm outside was spectacular. The rain hit the windows like it was trying to get in, like something was chasing it. I sat on the couch in the living room and watched it until my eyes began to close. 

  It was all very dramatic.

  It’s been raining all day, and I have the day off, and I have barely left my room. I’ve been sitting at my desk trying to make something beautiful. It helps, in a strange way, to make stuff – to write, or to take photos, or to draw something – it doesn’t give me answers, but it makes it easier not to have any. 

  All my closest friends are far away, so we have been sending each other whatever we can, just to bridge the distance. I have been making little videos, which I mostly film with my cell phone, although I’ve recently learned that there’s a way to make my digital camera (which doesn’t take video) able to film things, and I feel like that would be worth trying. Either way, it’s been nice to have a reason to make nice things and nice to have a reason to share them. I might start posting some of them here.

  Generally, I’m afraid to share things unless I feel like they are somehow fully formed and amazing, which nothing I do ever really is. I’ve been trying to do it anyway – keeping a “public” blog was a good exercise in that – but I could try harder. 

  I’ve been writing often. It’s all kind of sloppy, but there’s a lot of it, and for now that seems good enough. And I’ve been reading. And I’ve been driving a lot and listening to the radio and slowing down the truck when I see deer in the ditch waiting to cross the road. Next week I am visiting the little mountain town where I worked last summer – I will hike and walk and eat ice cream and sleep on a bunk bed and I can’t wait.

  I feel like coming home has been like retreating entirely into my very private, internal world. I’ve developed a routine of reading and writing and driving and working and it’s all pretty calm and I think a lot and do nearly everything by myself and I don’t mind. I think I can understand why people become hermits. It’s nice to have the space to get to know yourself without having to worry too much about outside input. 

  I mean that in as unselfish a way as something like that can be said. It isn’t I don’t love very many people in my life, or that I don’t respect the opinions of others, because I do. But I am very – perhaps overly – sensitive, and having fewer external responses to filter through is a nice thing to be experiencing lately. 

  That might sound nuts. I don’t know. 

   

  h.  

   

   

  • 11:47 pm
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