Relief
I just got on email from Erin and I am so incredibly relieved to know that she's ok. I hadn't heard from her or gotten any replies to my emails in a few months and I was really very concerned that something g had happened. And maybe something did happen, I don’t know yet because I haven't talked to her, but at least she wrote an email, which means she's there. I can't wait to talk to that girl.
We didn't really get to be friends until we started sharing a studio our junior year of college. My first semester they had put me in one of the really big and private graduate studios by myself. I am not sure why I got so lucky with the studio, but I think it had something to do with me registering for classes late since I had just some back from my year at SVA. Anyways, second semester Erin needed a studio and somehow, I don't remember how in came about, we agreed to "move in together" into mine. It was awesome. We got to know each other and did some wonderfully idiotic and hilarious things on those late nights in VAPA. Our senior year, our luck in academic real estate escalated and we scored another one of the graduate studios, only this one was way bigger, and in the Carpenter Shop which was an old barn/house looking building away from VAPA and the rest of the campus. Again, crazy shit ensued. Many hours were spent playing the "what-if" game, and agonizing about how we were going to make our living as artists without being lame and snooty, and driving to Texaco in the middle of the night for coffee, candy and cigarettes.
The amazing thing about E is that she was always about a mile ahead of me in my thinking. Some things were just obvious to her, so by the time I got to having one of my revelations about art or politics or god, she had already been there. I am stubborn though and tend not to see things right in front of my face until I am good and ready to see them. At the end of our senior year I applied for an internship at This American Life.(This was a period that I was convinced that radio was true calling, art be damned.) Being that E is a native of Chicago, the plan was that I would get the internship and move to Chi-town with her and hang out or live with her for at least a year. Turns out, I didn't get the internship and stayed in NJ for a year feeling quietly embittered about the whole thing. I have only seen her once (I think) since we graduated, and that was when I went out to Chicago for a few days in October of 2002. Holy shit it's been a really long time. We don't talk as much as we should, and it's mostly my fault because I hate talking on the phone.
I want to go visit her, wherever the hell she is now. A few months back she quit everything and moved to San Francisco, and when shit got weird for her there, I tried to talk her into coming to Philly. Well, maybe I still have a chance to convince her to come east and at least visit our sparse little city, if not make a new home here.
We used to scheme all the time about starting a business of some kind together. We probably won't ever do it - the ship has passed on that one as they say. But daydreaming about it brings back that feeling that everything was possible, practicality and fiscal security be damned.
But something I was again reminded of yesterday is that it is still permissible to feel reckless in that way even though we are getting older and responsible and all that hooey. Things only affect us if we chose to allow them to affect us. I was getting all worked up about the bills that I haven't paid yet and my declining credit and so on, but after an hour of whining and crying to R, I remembered (thanks to R) that it really doesn't matter. It's just money, and we'll never have it and always owe it, so why get upset?
Everything is still possible. Recklessness is an asset more precious than a credit score.
We didn't really get to be friends until we started sharing a studio our junior year of college. My first semester they had put me in one of the really big and private graduate studios by myself. I am not sure why I got so lucky with the studio, but I think it had something to do with me registering for classes late since I had just some back from my year at SVA. Anyways, second semester Erin needed a studio and somehow, I don't remember how in came about, we agreed to "move in together" into mine. It was awesome. We got to know each other and did some wonderfully idiotic and hilarious things on those late nights in VAPA. Our senior year, our luck in academic real estate escalated and we scored another one of the graduate studios, only this one was way bigger, and in the Carpenter Shop which was an old barn/house looking building away from VAPA and the rest of the campus. Again, crazy shit ensued. Many hours were spent playing the "what-if" game, and agonizing about how we were going to make our living as artists without being lame and snooty, and driving to Texaco in the middle of the night for coffee, candy and cigarettes.
The amazing thing about E is that she was always about a mile ahead of me in my thinking. Some things were just obvious to her, so by the time I got to having one of my revelations about art or politics or god, she had already been there. I am stubborn though and tend not to see things right in front of my face until I am good and ready to see them. At the end of our senior year I applied for an internship at This American Life.(This was a period that I was convinced that radio was true calling, art be damned.) Being that E is a native of Chicago, the plan was that I would get the internship and move to Chi-town with her and hang out or live with her for at least a year. Turns out, I didn't get the internship and stayed in NJ for a year feeling quietly embittered about the whole thing. I have only seen her once (I think) since we graduated, and that was when I went out to Chicago for a few days in October of 2002. Holy shit it's been a really long time. We don't talk as much as we should, and it's mostly my fault because I hate talking on the phone.
I want to go visit her, wherever the hell she is now. A few months back she quit everything and moved to San Francisco, and when shit got weird for her there, I tried to talk her into coming to Philly. Well, maybe I still have a chance to convince her to come east and at least visit our sparse little city, if not make a new home here.
We used to scheme all the time about starting a business of some kind together. We probably won't ever do it - the ship has passed on that one as they say. But daydreaming about it brings back that feeling that everything was possible, practicality and fiscal security be damned.
But something I was again reminded of yesterday is that it is still permissible to feel reckless in that way even though we are getting older and responsible and all that hooey. Things only affect us if we chose to allow them to affect us. I was getting all worked up about the bills that I haven't paid yet and my declining credit and so on, but after an hour of whining and crying to R, I remembered (thanks to R) that it really doesn't matter. It's just money, and we'll never have it and always owe it, so why get upset?
Everything is still possible. Recklessness is an asset more precious than a credit score.
posted by beef at 8:53 AM
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