Tomorrow at 3pm I am going to board the Greyhound, and after 3 layovers and 26 hours, I'll be back in Fort Wayne. Whenever I'm in Fort Wayne, I'm going to get a job and finish the application procedure for IPFW. I'll save money for a car, pay Thomas, and start my life.
I decided years ago that I was going to go into the field of Fine Art, and a few weeks ago Thomas listed all of the reasons I should go into Art History, and they all seem to be correct, so that is what I'm going to do. Since I dropped out of school senior year and went to San Francisco, I've been floating around looking for every possible option that wasn't Indiana or Fine Art. I never wanted to be "stuck" in Fort Wayne, like Sarah and Angie and all of my high school friends, but my perception of the situation has changed. I probably could have gone to some amazing school on the East or West Coast, but dropping out of school ruined those opportunities; it is only now that I have accepted this fact.
Coming to Providence got me away from most everything. I’ve been left with a lot of boredom, time to think about who I am and what I’m doing. I’ve said all of this before, but I was never forced myself to be optimistic enough to change the path that my life was on. A complete change of heart and mind was necessary, and I really do feel like a different person than when I left Indiana two months ago. I thought I was done riding the Train Wreck, but it still followed me. I’ve been around Dan enough for the past month to see how people of Integrity live their lives and I have to say that the feelings I had in Boston were enough to crush my Dreams. They are rebuilding and I’ll be stronger than ever.
Before I left, I read Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney and I could definitely see the same defects in myself as in the main character’s ex-wife: Midwestern girl that knows so little about who she is that she loses herself in the glitz and glam of the City, after years of yearning to do the opposite in the same City. I could see them, but after all it is just bad fiction, so why acknowledge the fact that McInerney had my character down 20 years ago? This is the point when I’m going to step back and use my head. (No, I didn’t leave it in Michael’s pocket in BFE, Rhode Island a year ago.)
Addictions
I don’t know how or when, but I’ve decided that I’m going to quit smoking. Every time I open my pouch to roll a cigarette, I get a little bit more disgusted with myself. I can’t do anything without getting winded, I cough all of the time, and I am always cold. Not to mention: both of my Grandmothers are slowly dying from this (one with emphysema, the other with emphysema and lung Cancer) and, I might not want to live to one-hundred, but I’d at least like to have sixty comfortable years of life on Earth. I want to be able to ride my bike without huffing and puffing. I want my constant heart burn to go away. I don’t want to feel like every hour I’m gradually committing suicide and that my soul might possibly pay for Eternity for it. Addictions suck.
Boston
Boston last weekend was awesome. Dan and I rode the Bonanza out and wandered around on the Historical Path for awhile, visited Boston Common where there was a memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Mass. State House. We saw the graves of Paul Revere and Samuel Adams and a deeply depressing Holocaust Memorial. A giant clock, a million people and pigeons, dinner at Cheers, and the best pizza I’ve ever had. We took the Commuter Rail to Concord, Massachusetts and stopped in at a very quaint decor shop on Thoreau Street and asked for directions to Walden Pond. The 2-3 mile trek to the Pond (we underestimated how cold it would get) didn’t seem so bad, only took forty-five minutes or so, and was well worth it. I guess he really did live in a "Shanty", if the replica of it was similar to the original. The Pond itself was picturesque and frozen over, with a perfectly blue sky to go along. We got there around Dusk, and it seemed that nothing else existed anywhere on the earth. Right in front of the place we decided to sit, written in the snow was "I Love Jeff,"...odd...We froze our asses off of the trudge back to the yuppie town and plopped into the Starbucks (one of seven tallied), drank coffee, and defrosted for an hour, and back to Boston. Dan surprised me with a hotel room at a Hilton in some middle-of-nowhere town, where I got to sit in my first "hot tub" (not actually hot, just piss-warm) and we spent most of the next day at the Museum of Fine Arts (also my first museum [besides FWMOA]). The Italian Renaissance sculptures were amazing, the Monet was less than I expected, and there were too many other pieces to make a comment on every single one, but I will say: there were too many people. Back to Providence for beers and cheeseburgers at Trinity, and I couldn’t have been more satisfied with the whole experience–unless, perhaps, it was a few degrees warmer.
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