de donde eres?

well, in the last week i've been asked about twice daily where i'm from. and i don't know how to answer.

of course, there's the problem i've had for years. i was born on the west coast. grew up in the midwest. went to school in chicago. lived in new york. resided in DC.

but i could always fall back on the place i currently lived. the place i paid rent. where my car was registered. where i voted. where i paid taxes. but now that's over. my stuff lives in my parents' basement and closets. i sleep in a bed in chicago. my affiliation is with a school in DC. and in a week, i will physically be in Bolivia.

and so i stutter. i hesitate. i look to other people to answer for me. because i am no longer from anywhere. i am only to somewhere. to illinois. to chicago. a bolivia. and with my fromness, in a way, my history is obscured. if i'm not from dc, i have no school, i have no purpose.


leaving dc has been difficult. its the end of an era in a way. and i'm not sure i'm entirely ready for the next era. i'm hesitating about all kinds of things. but in a way, i suppose bolivia has come to symbolize a release. a relief. a place where i can just be. and there the answers are easy.

soy de los estados unidos.

hasta luego

today i cleaned out my drawer. just a simple desk drawer. one that has not always been mine, and is sure in the course of a few months to no longer be remembered as mine. i inherited it from audrey, just over 3 years ago. and in a way, it has been my home. it has been my stability.

grad school is a tumultuous time. it is a time over overwork, underpay, urgency, stagnation, and extremes. gaping holes and overfilled plates. all night cubicle sessions. yoga in workspaces. couch naps. margarita binges. star gazing outside of institutions you reject. deconstructing institutions you must accept and trying to reconcile the institutions you simultaneously love and hate. it is tearing yourself apart, while forcefully defending yourself when others try to do the same. it is finding yourself and losing yourself. it is losing the world and finding it again.

and my drawer was my home in all this. and in a way, cleaning out my drawer was an archaeology of grad school life (in both a binford sense and a foucaultian one). i unearthed the relics of the last 4 years. contemporary theory articles. pre-bolivia papers. approvals from all 4 comps. conference schedules. old printed emails. books, and food, and telephones, and other assorted ephemera.

and now all that remains are 4 library books.

this drawer has been a home to me more than any apartment i've occupied in DC. its is my box of essentials. my first-aid kit (whiskey). it has held soccer cleats and cookies. dissertation proposals and graded undergrad exams.

and then at the end of the day i went to my last dissertation seminar. possibly ever. and audrey was there. and ted was there. and everyone in between. and in a way it felt like a generational menagerie. a foucaultian geneology. and abby gave me some old phones that might work on gsm 1900. and i gave mahri a tent that used to be julie's. there's something so nice about the passing of goods. not only because they're useful, but because they have a history. and that history centers around this space/place. this ambition. this process.

and i said goodbye to david (though hopefully not for the last time before i leave). david who i first got to know through a shared experience of breakups. david to whom i've alluded my darkest secrets. david who shook my hand during orientation, and provided us all with a swanky party atop a downtown law office building. david who let me cry to him for 10 minutes after passing my defense.

this is not the end. it is only a new phase. but really, it is the end to some things. and its time for that end, but that doesn't mean i'm ready.

embalajar 1

i'm packing up things from the place i've lived the longest since leaving my parents' home (only slightly longer than 912 hamlin). this is a place that has felt like home. a place i've lived.

and so, i'm going through a box of papers i've been toting around for about 6 years. i thought i'd share this gem. i'm not sure when i wrote it, but it was between a national geographic map of north american cultures and a copy of my 2006 tax returns.

we once drove over the mountain

a 2 hour trip at 11 pm

just to consume illegal substances

and return 5 hours later

hung over, sore, exhausted.

we stayed up all night chanting

in a language we didn't understand

and unknowingly ruined the cake.

we were enigmas of the desert

unbridled, unburdened, young, strong, and restless.

but we can't keep it up any more.

we fly in from the east coast

now 2 less than we were

wearing nice shoes

with purses and 3 piece suits

here we are somehow adult, still drinking vodka

from plastic bottles

but we can't stay up past 12

we are slowly dying, our adopted clan

as we cling to that language we only

borrowed superficially.