Every Beginning is Difficult

I’ve been in Philadelphia for nearly a week now and have wanted to start this blog since before I left.  I wanted to write about how I love St. Louis in the summer, how that place and the people I’ve collected there have shaped me, how nervous and excited I was to move.  But, as always, I got busy with things—not my normal things (work, school, shows, etc), mind you, but the important and lugubrious tasks of leaving that are far less finite.  Funny how “say goodbye” seems so hard to check off, and still so incomplete after leaving.

Then I started the two-day moving process.  I wanted to write about driving cross-country with my dad, how special that tradition has become, how this time felt somehow different—knowing that, even though he will probably help me move in the future, this is the last time he’s driving me “to school.” 

Then I moved in and wanted to write about how much I love my apartment.  I wanted to write about the spacious elegance of our high ceilings, the peculiar utility of our washer/dryer’s placement, the almost imperceptible slant of the hallway floor that compels doors ajar and sleepy feet to bed.  I walked my neighborhood and wanted to write about the shaded charm of my street, my affinity for sitting on stoops in the evening, the coffee shop around the corner.

Things stacked up, and so, instead of beginning at the beginning, I will begin now and reach back as the fancy strikes me.

“Now” happens to find me quite probably the most alone I have ever been in my life.  My roommate (who is lovely, by the way) left for a road trip early this morning and my parents (who have been here to help me settle in and to see the city) departed after breakfast.  I don’t know a soul.  But I’m not feeling very lonely—at least not yet.  I spent a considerable portion of the day reading and writing in Rittenhouse Square.  The weather has been hot and humid but a spattering of rain yesterday brought around the most perfect summer day today.  I came home, popped the windows, cooked dinner and watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  All in all a rather lovely day.

Lately I’ve fancied myself a bit of an artist—or if not, at least someone capable of making something similar to a $500 piece I liked at an art show this past weekend.  And so, friendless in these evening hours, I find myself sitting on a newspaper-covered floor with an open jar of acrylic gloss medium and a blasphemously deconstructed copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn contemplating the most aesthetically appropriate placement of a flock of paper birds.  (… and yes I will post pictures of this potential disaster when it’s finished).  I will keep at this project for a bit longer tonight, but I know sleep will find me soon.  For tomorrow is a day slated for adventures of the most independent sort.

And now that I have finally begun, you, gentle reader, will perhaps read of such adventures soon.

With love and best wishes,

Em