I am still living with your ghost, lonely and dreaming of the West Coast.

how's this for ridiculous: at school, most of what I wrote was about Pittsburgh. almost everything set in Pittsburgh or the vicinity, everything about what it's like and what it means to be from where I'm from. (maybe because at school, everyone thought I was from Philly no matter how many times I told them - it was like being from nowhere at all, after a while.)

and now I'm home, in the middle of the Appalachians again, and all I want to write about is...California, a state in which I've spent a grand total of five days. all I want to read about too, between Kerouac and rereading Moneyball again (I wonder how many people are fascinated with Beat writers and baseball statistics simultaneously, to the point where they seem to be connected? not many, probably).

it's a little stupid. I am following two baseball teams from the Bay Area (or trying, anyway, while keeping up with the Pirates and Sox, not to mention hockey); making a playlist entitled "going to California"; wondering how realistic it is to plan to live in San Francisco at some point if at all possible. wondering how I could handle being that far away, if 3,000 miles is any different than 600. wondering when I can get back to the Pacific Ocean because I need that shit in my life as soon as I can get it.

on top of it all, every time I see Fenway Park on TV I miss Boston to the point of physical pain. it's weird things I miss about Boston. Fenway on game nights, of course, and all the places I can lie in the grass and read and write. the random spots on campus, Boston Common. the fact that I can take a fucking train to a fucking beach. tall buildings, looking out my window from fourteen floors up instead of two. sidewalks. places where I can be by myself, or at least not bothered, being easily accessible. other things I don't miss at all, but almost none of those have to do with the city itself.

I feel like wandering. I feel like I'm waiting for something to happen right now, except I don't know what it is. I'm in a minor writing lull - that is, what I want to say isn't coming as easily - which always makes me kinda restless. sometimes when I'm not writing, I feel like I need a change elsewhere in my life to get me moving.

pictures of cool stuff I've done in the last 24 hours

Fenway Park, foolz. one of the greatest places in the world. contrary to how it looks here, it did not rain.

and the Sox won in epically clutch bottom-of-the-eighth fashion and my two favorites were heroes. Pedroia = favorite human.

Blue Line train to Revere Beach today. I take pictures of the T a lot.

THIS IS NEAR ME. an hour out on the T, anyway.

oh hallo I am in the ocean

living there someday. or a comparable place in New England or Northern California.

distraction #74. blogger still won't let me upload images

there's so much I want to say. most of the time I don't have anyone to say it to here at school. I'm sure that's part of why I've written so much this year (on Wednesday or Thursday, when I have nothing to do, I might count up all the words I've written this year, outside of the epic stuff I've had to do for class). I've always written better than I talk.

I'm not excited-without-reservations to go home. after the Bruins game on Saturday I sat outside in the sun just looking at the North End, being in this second city of mine and enjoying it. today I went to the badass record store on west campus for the first time. walked there. can't walk anywhere at home. there's a whole lot I love about Boston, and about being here (and I am seeing Jon Lester pitch at Fenway tomorrow night, and it had better not fucking rain because I am 2EXCITED4LIFE).

but I'm ready to go home. I'm ready to speak freely and be comfortable just about all the time. I'm ready to have my car back and not have to wake up every time my roommates get up, because I won't have roommates. I'm ready to drive into Pittsburgh and get to know my first city a little better. I'm ready for the Pens on my TV, not on a shitty internet feed that routinely breaks down during the second period. I'm ready for my friends and family and epic adventures and summer. and oh yeah, shit, I turn 19 on Thursday. what a weird age.

georgia on my mind? forgive me, it's my last week of class

While contemplating my possible future in an all-girl Beatles cover band (where I would, of course, be George - I've even been told I play guitar like him, which is not exactly the highest compliment a guitarist can be paid, but I'll take it), I realized that my name could totally be shortened to Georgia if I so desired. I tried to go by Georgie for about a week once in first grade, and I seem to remember that this was because of a girl in the Nancy Drew books I was reading named George. It didn't take.

It's kind of weird that I never, ever think of myself by my given name, and I don't think anybody else does either. I don't even think about it, aside from when I'm preparing on the first day of a new class to say "I go by Annie." I still have to take my time signing my full name on checks because that big unwieldy cursive G just doesn't come naturally. I have an A-name. I've always had an A-name. I kind of forget I'm Georgianne most of the time. But if I ever need a pen name or a clever alter ego I might just fall back on Georgia.

because my roommates are doing important things and I can't turn on the Sox game and interrupt them.

a brief list of mostly-semi-epic things I want to do in my life, in no particular order:

1. run the Boston Marathon (which is going on outside my window, zooomg)
2. go to Base Camp of Mount Everest
3. go to a Yankees-Sox game in New York in Sox stuff (I'd need someone to go with me, as I like being alive)
4. go to an NHL playoff game
5. play an actual gig with a band/play songs I/my band has written in said gig
6. meet Chuck Klosterman
7. party with Max Talbot
8. drive from an East Coast state to a West Coast state
9. go to Australia
10. live in Ireland for at least a few months
11. go to Spain and the Czech Republic and maybe France if I can be bothered
12. go to Montreal
13. write and publish a book
14. drive to somewhere I've never been before and sleep there for the night, unplanned
15. become fluent in another language.

america.

"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and the crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, reexamine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."
- Uncle Walt

yeah, sorry for being insufferable.

every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

the sky is
seamlessly blue-gray
rippling over dark Cambridge
splashing down into the Charles
where it meets the highway

I am
on a fifth floor that feels more like a basement
parsing the writings
of a sweaty-toothed madman
and his heirs
willing or unwilling

I remember
clouds overseas, over seas
that broke up against the easternmost wall of my continent
and an island at the end of the world
where kids with soccer nets in their damp front yards
grew food in walled-off Cromwellian soil
and went to the mainland when they needed the twentieth century.

this sky is
heavy and low as in Ireland
as at the foggy tip of the English emperor's reign
old New England in muted color
and Dickensian quiet beauty
miles away.