I wish this week was over already.

Now I know that my life in things fits into a Toyota Camry and one blue Grand Caravan. It feels much smaller than that though, and smaller still with sixty-percent of it annexed into the garage. The rest of it right now sits around the outer perimeter of a guest room, the fish tank balanced haphazardly on a table, the large one warming up. The computer is under the window, the monitor on the night stand.

It is a seventy-mile round-trip to work now into the city. It is four dollars a day to park downtown. It will probably be anywhere from five-hundred to seven-hundred dollars to live in a place by myself, less if my cousin decides to go in with me on a lease. There is a triple date that will be cut down to one couple and two women drinking together, probably. I have thirty boxes, five or six Tupperware bins (or more?), and it has been two days.  As un-ideal as this is, it is now seven-thirty in the evening. I moved in just about two hours. This is my life.

Friday. Longest day of work ever. Fatigue, then sweating palms, underarms, racing heartbeat. Will I make it? A hurried dinner, spaghetti and meatballs. Driving. Traffic. I hate Atlanta traffic, but it’s something you get used to. Something that becomes part of your daily routine. Airport. Miss the exit. I drive back, aggravated. I kiss the Boy goodbye. Check in, weigh my bag (seven pounds), empty. Go through security. Alone but together with shuffling, angry people. Sweating. Wait, wait, wait. Stare at the screen. Wait for my name (ABR/K) to pop up on the cleared. Wait. Ten minutes to take off. Get a seat. 40B. Stow my bag, press my head back, turn on the air, sit back. Sweat. It’s hot. Sit next to a girl who scoffs at everything–the woman coughing two rows up, the baby crying, the jolt as we start to taxi–and a man who cranes over me to look out the window. Milosevic. Land. Early. Meet the Best Friend in the baggage claim. My bag is the first one out. Drive to school. Meet another friend. Stand, cooling down in the night air, as we talk, talk, talk. Drive back to the Best Friend’s house, fall asleep.

It is strange to be home, strange. It feels, however, wonderfully safe. Although I move, relatively anonymous now, down the familiar roads and in and out of buildings, I can’t help but feel as though I’ve arrived back at home. It doesn’t seem like almost five months have passed since I’ve been here. Can it be? Just yesterday, I was driving these same roads. They’re burned into my mind. I can call them at will and they’re still the same, with minor details, of course, changed. My life in the south seems far away, as if it were simply a short period and not some longer, more permanent Now. But I see friends and they pull me into their bodies and hold me, tell me it’s so good to see you! and you look different.

Do I? I only half agree with them. Perhaps I’ve cleaned up a bit, refined some of my clothing tastes and touched up some areas. But I’m still the same, still essentially the same person that left a few months ago. And while I talk about life’s changes with several people, in the back of my mind I do agree with them. I feel as though I have made my decision for how I’ll live. I decided to leave. To see if I could move on and do something else for a while. Most of my life I feel as though I’ve been in the same place, and suddenly Atlanta opened up and took me in, whispered that I could make my own life there if I wanted. And so yes, with moving there I have become more like the people I work with instead of who I was with my old friends. I’ve adopted some of their tastes in music, started to enjoy living an urban life, a young professional’s life, and have begun to accept life by myself, without the family hovering over me.

No matter what though, some things remain the same. Saturday I spend time with the Best Friend, and we banter like nothing’s changed. And today, I go to church and it’s the same people. I see an old friend and we eat and talk and nothing has really changed overall; the big picture is still the same but the details have changed. I wonder where we will be in another few years (in a few years, it will have been 10 since we first saw each other), whether I’ll still be down south and whether me and all of my friends will still relate to one another, or if it will be different again, as though we never knew each other at all. I hope not.

Facts of show:
The grey haze that envelops the brain after working fourteen hours a day for several days in a row, the kind of haze that makes it impossible to remember simple tasks, the ends, beginnings, and sometimes the middles of sentences, and which makes remember faces and appointments damn near impossible.

The coffee, already cold after sitting out for a few minutes. It has gone stale and bitter in the time it takes to walk from the back to the front.

The burning ache that starts down in the calves and races to the bottom of the foot; after six days of working abnormally it is suddenly strange putting weight on the corrrect parts of the foot, and evenly distributed, too. At night the pain spreads to the shins and the knees and in the morning when the alarm goes off and I step out of bed for the first time, I nearly collapse from the muscle atrophy.

The drunken people who attend. You can tell who they are because they race past you without saying hello and head back to the bar, where there is alcohol sitting, waiting.  These people are worked into a further dizzy frenzy when Mike the Cute Bartender comes in to mix cranberry martinis; he gazes indifferently at the customers and hands out drinks as he’s bid, later tossing out demure smiles as he makes the rounds of the showroom to clean up a bit.  You get used to the ones walking around with some of our company yardsticks, nearly impaling you or knocking down shelves of merchandise with their carelessness. And once in a while, when no one’s looking, you get to sneak a cocktail, too.

Hunger and the knowledge that you will be too tired after it ends to eat. In fact, sleep too will become a luxury that you can’t afford. You will even consider just staying at work, sleeping in the back, instead of driving through the intoxicated masses who mill around the lots of the Mart after hours, still drunk off their last wine, and who are still going to go to the bar anyway.

The fourth and fifth day of Market, nobody’s brain is working. I am thankful it’s not just me. Every other person who leans on the front counter takes a breath and says, “Is your brain functioning?”

No, I answer them. Not it’s really not. I am unable to form complete sentences and can’t seem to remember what day it is. Even during the day I am unaware of what day it is, my brain wrapped in a strange, distant fog. At the end of all of this, I realize, I will have lost an entire week and a weekend to the fray. An entire week gone, an entire week of not knowing what day it is. A whole week spend living in an artificial environment, with lights and smells and people, grubbing, dirty, greedy people. A whole week spent waking up in the dark before the sun rises, and finally re-entering it long after the sun has set. Atlanta lived in the dark, the night alive and buzzing but the day lost.

Today is not so bad. I am actually able to find beauty in the glow of the city before dawn, in the case of butterflies outside the parking garage, in the glittering beads of a white tree illuminated with spot lights in the lobby of my building.

Anyways, it is almost over. Today is the last day. Fourteen days straight and we’re finished. I’m relieved.

As my gym instructor said, “Why weren’t you in class on Saturday?”

 It’s January Market downtown for this week, through the next one, I told her.

 ”Oh!” she said. “I’m sorry. Well, we’ll see you when we see you.” And that was that.

That’s everything that’s been happening, why I haven’t updated, and why you probably won’t be able to catch me on the phone or returning emails.

I’m on day three of my nine day stretch working these hours (7:30 AM to whenever the last customer leaves the showroom at night). Then two more days working and I’ll be going home for a bit.

Well, see you much later!

I haven’t had time to think about this last year, or about this upcoming year. Instead, I’ve been consumed with work. We’re starting show in less than a week. I’m stressed and tired.
Things:

- Last night the water went out. I peered out the window at the exact same time the creepy upstairs-across-the-street neighbors did. We saw each other and dropped the shades. I think they spy on me, although I’m not sure. Even though I wasn’t peering at them, they were the only points of light readily visible from our window that late at night, and it was funny that we looked out at the same time. Their water was probably out too (consensus from the neighbors was that a pipe had burst somewhere on the property).

- strange dreams again all last night. I went to bed completely stuffy but woke up clear. It is a weird feeling. No further dreams about being stabbed though; I think me ‘dying’ from the last dream I had was because I had a rough time breathing while sleeping the other night.

- I am going home in two weeks. My cousin secured me cheap tickets, for which I am on standby. This makes me nervous; I’d much rather have my plans set in stone (ie… full-fare tickets) than be on standby. And what if there’s snow?! I’ll be stuck at the airport. But anyway, thank you Drew and thank you Delta for the courtesy for now.

- Really there are only two people I really want to see, minus my family. The rest of the people I left behind in Maryland… I either don’t care to see, or don’t mind being apart from them. Considering several people don’t care to call me back or communicate with me in a straightforward, honest, adult fashion, I suppose my friendship didn’t mean all that much to them. I just wish people wouldn’t pretend. Nonexistent connections are clutter for the mind. Oh well. Maybe this means that my memories of Maryland are simply that, memories, that I should move on with my life and with the new friendships that have been springing up and be thankful for those people.

It’s hard to break old habits though. Especially when those habits are people. I told my cousin–one of the people whom I’ve been able to spend much more time with the last few months and who is dealing with the same separation issues with his own friends–that maybe we might have to accept that some of our close friendships are now simply digital friendships. That growing distance is fine as long as we find something else to fulfill ourselves.

I don’t know. I could just be making stuff up. But we’ll see. Anyway, my visit home is only two weeks away. Exciting!

Anyway, when I think of something profound to say about 2007, I will.

This is how I know I’m getting old:

New Year’s Eve. Go out to dinner to Silk in Midtown. Drink half a martini (it was bad). Eat good seafood, feel fine. Go home, suddenly afflicted with heavy fatigue. Fall asleep, promising to wake up in time to play a game with friends and then celebrate the new year.

Wake up at 12:02, having missed the ball drop; wake to the sound of gunfire and sirens. Realize some time later that it is probably not sirens, but fireworks (although the sirens make things very suspicious, and besides, it wouldn’t have surprised me if they were). Eat some cookies. Watch an episode of The X-files. Fall back asleep until 10.

Lay around most of the day. Then very late go out to see “AVPR” with the cousin, eat dinner, and come back, ready to pass out again.

I suppose it doesn’t help that I think I’m getting a head cold. Well, it’s about time. I’ve been around sick people for the last month and a half and so far escaped lucky. Since we’re working harder and later now, I guess I was due. Well, I’m armed with a supply of Cold-eeze and vitamins, so hopefully this will blow over before it gets too serious.

I do have to say that the first day of the new year was surprisingly beautiful. Oh, Atlanta.