they call it the hill country

i bought a ticket for austin today, leaving on tuesday.

i told my friends in texas and they asked me... are you okay? and i am okay.

i am okay, and part of me thinks i should stick it out here, feel it all the way through, and use it when the time comes.

but the other part is homesick for texas, scared of what i might choose to do if left to my own devices for a couple more weeks...

because these here are dead weeks. the 20th i do orientation for new york cares, and then there's the nyu open house and cuny's doing a bar thing, and after that i should hear from the internship people...

but the 8th to the 20th is almost two weeks, and after my behavior at the bar, followed by a series of events that have called to my attention the need for me to be smarter... and it's not that i'm not aware that every dude is not to be trusted... but if i didn't trust the few that i have enough to hang out with them, then who would i hang out with?

and rilke is real big on solitude, and he says, in letters to a young poet, to embrace it, and work with it and from it. like, WRITE. but i'm SCARED TO WRITE.

i'm scared to be left to what i really think, to strip it away from friends and comfort and parties, opinions casually espoused over a toke; to turn it into something meaningful to be pondered, cherished, understood.

and more immediately, i am trying to tie my outer self to my inner self, when these two skins seem at times drastically at odds. people look at me and what do they think? what do i want them to think? why should i care... except that i need them to share with me their lives. 

but reporting, for me, can't be purely recording... and i wouldn't want it to be. but it affects me, what people say and do. and i find myself responding to people in ways that cause me to see things in myself i didn't fully see were there.

javi, in high school, gave me this cheap gaudy ring and i'm going to keep it in my purse from now on. with some pepper spray.

i think, if i want to do this, i'm going to need to focus on fully on writing. it's scary, though, because i have no idea where it will lead my life. 

things i want to write about:

-education

-gentrification

-street art

-subways

-people

still consuming massive amounts of words. today, started 'a tree grows in brooklyn'... a little context.