After the general awesomeness of 2003 - personal stuff, organizing, academics, (particularly the first half of the year) - 2004 has been a lot more ambiguous. I left New Haven, where i'd fought for four years to build a community i was proud to be a part of, and which i feel a lot worse about leaving than Yale, which is really just another four letter word, with all the complexities of semantics and meaning that implies. I spent four months, or three and a half, i guess, in my parents' apartment being miserable. I took a road trip across the country with Julie, which was a lot of fun, until we neared the home stretch (for me) and everything seemed like it was going to shit all over again. I wandered the streets of New York city, saw friends brutalized by the police state and my hometown under militarized occupation. I took a staff position with the union, coordinating a boycott against two non-union hotels in an exciting fight i care a lot about (but won't talk about much here for fear of MEG googling) and left feeling like i had failed. I wandered up through the boston suburbs in a misguided a deeply masculinist faux-homeric/tolkienite journey in search of myself or some bullshit like that. There have been other good moments too - chilling with friends in New Haven, with Vic in New York, going to Mexico in January and hanging out with K, the arrival of a new cousin(!), Watching the red sox win on TV and participating in the collective urban orgasm that followed (is my use of sexuallizing langauge here problematic?) watching the mets beat the tigers in extra innings at shea with lev and alyssa, the week i spent in arizona, getting to know joey and katharine in boston and meeting and working with local 26 members, the atlantic city strike march, the fact that my 11 year old cousin is now a better guitar player than i am (no joke, he rocks.) But i leave this year feeling, well, ambivalent. Ambivalent and lonely. But i'm also, as i frantically put together applications, (and trying to decide whether or not i can justify going to Vic's party) excited about grad school, whether that happens next year or the year after. And i guess i'm also excited about getting my own apartment in new york and building a new life here. I gotta confess, though - I'm also kind of scared, because i don't want to fuck up again and find myself in the same frustrated state of loneliness and self-loathing and inertia. I guess it's up to me.

spinning dj shadow: entroducing