Boston, California

I mean Boston the city, not the Band. California, I mean the Joni Mitchell song. You see, I’ve made the very difficult decision, to finally go and make it my home. An easy choice, but a difficult decision to actually go through with. I’ve gotten so used to not being entitled a home, having been thrown out of my own country, running around in many others while trying to assimilate and not really cutting it, then finding a place I loved but was not as eager to welcome me there, California. It kind of became my schtick, being a nomad. Even having been in California four years already, they were not without struggle and a lot of hard work, beyond what I am capable of doing these days. Now, it seems things may be working out with my life, my work, my visa, myself… and all these things that hve been up in the air and beyond my power for so long seem to be finally working in my favor. I’ve decided to go to California, mend back the pieces of my neglected and broken life, resist the romance of another faraway journey, and make somewhere my home. In as much as I am happiest looking out the window of a train to waving children or a plane in thick clouds, after a while it loses it’s freedom when I’m not sure that there will be a place at the end of it all where I can lay my head, take off my shoes, and not have to speak to anyone. I become trapped in not knowing anywhere I belong to. And it’s been too long. Twenty years too long. I’m ready for a mailbox, a closet.

I’ve had to tell my grandmother I will not be coming to the Philippines, who for the last ten years cries each time we see each other, that it will be the last. She’ll be 90 on Thursday. I’ve had to tell the Displacements crew that I will not be returning to Sri Lanka, which was especially difficult. Teaching design to war affected children? It’s perfect for me. At least I feel confident, as the program is funded and underway, someone will be teaching them, just not me. But with all the signs and omens pointing to it, immigration laws as they are at the moment (allowing me, though my current visa expires in a week, to stay while my work visa application is in process), and my lawyers advising me to stay…I’ll be leaving Boston on Wednesday not for Asia, but Los freakin Angeles.

The last seven weeks here in Boston have been surprisingly some of the best I’ve ever spent. Perhaps I didn’t climb a mountain or have a fabulous night somewhere under some amazing sky or some chance meeting with Mr. incredible so and so, drinking a chai or being invited into some party or crazy house. But I’ve had something I haven’t really ever known, and that is silence.

I read and read and read, I watch films, I drink tea in bed with stupid magazines, I take walks every night. It’s hot at night, and the breeze from under the trees outside is relieving. I look in people’s windows, like an aquarium. Thorugh the bay windows, I see them eat dinner together without speaking. In the basement apartments I see them petting their cats with their feet up. Some have brick walls. Some are too high up I can’t see inside, only the blue flickering light from the TV in the Victorian turrets. I’ve learned how to read on the train without getting sick. I eat alone on park benches in the Common. I fall asleep in the afternoons beside weeping willows in the gardens, and wake up with ducks fighting over my leftover crusts. I go to the paper store and steal ideas. I cut out random shit from the paper and gluestick them in my book. I spend every other free moment in the library, and sit in the corner with piles of magazines and books until they kick me out at night. I’ve cooked all but three or four meals that I’ve eaten. On my unlimited nights and weekends, I talk to friends I haven’t seen in a long time. I’ve started running. I’ve always hated running. I could never keep up. But with no one to run with and a broken iPod, I’ve found myself retreating into my thoughts, looking up at the trees or down at my feet, past the geese and the ponds, the community gardens and cobblestone bridges, and before I know it, I’ve run to Fenway Park and back. I had found an almost brand new pair of pink New Balances for twenty bucks in a thrift store up in Portsmouth a few weeks before. The girl working in the shop said that in the winters, she brings her canvas to the store and paints all day, and in the summers, she knits clothes to sell in the winters. She loved my hair. I loved her earrings. We both loved knitting with the same wool yarn.

Something about the light in Boston. It makes everything so old seem even older. The tombstones are still in the ground all this time, and statues are stained green. The bricks are just off kilter from years and years but are still solid enough. I realize I only have good memories here, and here was the last place I really called home. Four years in one place. about twelve years ago.

So today, I'll walk down the Esplanade at before sunset. 12 years ago, there was a homless guy who wore head to toe fatigues and talked to himself in front a Pizza place on Marlborough and Mass Ave. A couple weeks ago, I saw he was still there. So...who's the homeless one now?

I'll buy a beer from the Quality mart, and Chicken Parmigiana Sub from Despinas. Then I will be ready to go home myself.