Today is my last day in New Jersey, again. Who knows how long it will be before I return. It took almost exactly one year — from April 27th, 2007 to April 30th, 2008 — to warrant a first visit. Supposedly (if you believe what I’ve promised my parents and friends) it will not take another year for me to find my way home. We’ll just have to wait and see.
I’m taking today “off” in order to relax and prepare myself for the return voyage. I awoke early this morning and drove to Denville to pick up a new pair of back-up glasses (for those days when I accidentally leave the house without them), and watched last night’s episode of LOST. Holy fucking shit, was it good. Does anyone else maybe think that Jacob is Locke? Is that just the craziest fucking thing you’ve ever heard? I don’t know, let me know what you think.
I’ve actually accumulated enough airline miles to fly first class from Newark to Los Angeles, so it should be an easy, comfortable flight. I might shirk my blogging duties tomorrow depending on what time the plane lands and how tired I am, but at the very least I’ll try to put together a brief entry with some music downloads tomorrow before I head to the airport.
Tonight we’re having a feast at my mother’s place. Fittingly, she has chosen to make her famous chicken parm to mark the occasion. It’s only three o’clock, but familiar scents are filling the air. The scents, surprisingly, are completely unrelated to my not having showered in over twenty-four hours.
It’s been an interesting ten days. I got to see a great number of my friends, and spend enough time with my family to not feel like I came home and dedicated all my time to non-family-related affairs. My biggest fear upon returning home was that I wouldn’t dedicate an equal amount of time to my friends, my mother and my father (especially considering I haven’t seen him in a year), but I think I handled it well. Of course, there were some road-bumps along the way. Several times I was reminded why exactly I chose to move across the country. Idiosyncrasies I used to find cloying or irksome are still capable of enraging me. In the end, I guess, nothing really changes. The characters that lived and breathed and flourished here for twenty-four years are still here. I guess that’s why they call it “home”.
The Top Ten Best (And Worst) Things About Coming Home
10. Good – Record Collection – I’ve started a nice little West Coast collection for myself, but nothing beats walking into my old bedroom and smiling at the site of that large IKEA shelving unit with all the records I bought since I started collecting in the summer of 2002. The first thing I did upon arriving at my father’s house (after we had a great dinner at a local steakhouse, but more on that later) was to walk upstairs and drop the needle on Simply Saucer’s Cyborgs Revisited. It finally felt like I was home. Then, of course, I walked downstairs and chatted with my father for a while, and then invited my friends over. The record collection, it appears (sadly), came first.
09. Bad – Weather – Temperatures in Los Angeles before I left reached the high-80s and low-90s. On Friday of last week, at Yankee Stadium, the temperature felt as if it had dropped well into the 40s. I was not prepared for such severe coldness. For the most part, it was warm here this week. It’s been consistently in the 70s, but the cold(er) nights are tough. It’s been raining all day today, and it drizzled yesterday as well as one day last week. I don’t remember the last time it rained three times in one week in LA. The weather out there, to put it bluntly, is perfect.
08. Good – Comfortable Bed – The bed in my apartment is a fucking twin. It doesn’t even really fit one person comfortably. I rarely sleep well in such a small bed. At home, not even the fact that my bedroom has been converted into an office can take away from my excitement about sleeping in that big, comfortable queen-sized bed. I get to lose myself in the sheets and bundle up with all the fancy blankets (as opposed to the cheap shit I have in LA). Even if I’m not getting a full night’s sleep (as evident from just about every entry I’ve posted this week) I sleep soundlessly in the big bed. I even dream.
07. Good – New York City – Though I didn’t have a car all week, the great thing about living so close to the city is that it is always accessible. Last night we got home from the Hoboken PATH in less than 25 minutes. Sometimes it takes me that long just to drive from my apartment to Soy Cafe, and that shit’s less than five miles away. Being so close to the greatest city in the world is a huge benefit to being at home. It offers a kind of escape that perhaps nothing else in the world can equal. Of course, if you’re going to do anything other than just walk around all day you’ll need a pocket full of cash, and that’s something I rarely have.
06. Good – Friends – I grew up in New Jersey. I made all my friends here. I spent twenty-three years cultivating relationships and building strong bonds with people. Many of my old friends have moved out-of-state, and I’ve lost touch with many, many more than that. The few that remain here in the New York / New Jersey area are awesome in every way imaginable. I’ve got Ian to geek out about music and baseball with, Jack and Ken to get drunk with, Sam and Lindsey offer a touch of sobriety and normalcy, and everyone else who came out last night (Z, Nat, Mike, Bret, Anthony, Zoya) to…uh…also get drunk with. Getting to see two of my oldest friends this week (Matt and Evan) was a complete surprise, and really elevated the amount of fun I had wile home.
05. Bad – Abnormal Psych – As I stated before, part of visiting home is dealing with all the frustrations that inevitably lead to my leaving New Jersey for California in the first place. Rather than insult everyone by writing exactly what I hate about them, I’ll just say that it’s still as annoying as ever having to deal with bad attitudes and irritating behavior. Thanks for bringing me down all week, assholes.
04. Good – Free Meals – This would be higher on the list if I had a more refined palate. Instead, it just ranks as the second highest “good” part about being home. I ate really, really well this week. The scale in the bathroom does not lie. On my first night home, I had a wonderful steak dinner at a local restaurant. Every morning I awoke to yummy breakfast foods, I was treated to lunches (oh, the number of eggs I ate this week!), and great dinners. I had fucking Wegmans the other day. There were fresh bagels available all week. The good kind, too. Not a fucking Trader Joe’s or Thomas’ bagel. I had Calabria’s buffalo chicken wing pizza, and Arturo’s coal oven pizza. My mother prepared two incredible meals. It was a non-stop feast, and I will be very, very sad when I return to LA and fall back into my routine of eating shitty gourmet pizza (or Pizza Hut), terrible bagels, and otherwise ho-hum food. Ugh, and all the fucking vegan options in Echo Park. Gross.
03. Bad – Appointments – The worst part about being home might be that your schedule is never really your own. Before I’d even landed in New Jersey, half of my days were booked solid with things to do. I guess that’s the sign of a person whose company is much sought after, but these ten days have also been a vacation, and I can’t even count the number of times I commented to myself just how little this has felt like a vacation. Doctors, relatives, family friends and even a former employer or two, it can be a struggle to assert oneself and decide that you are going to take a day to do entirely what you want to do. Luckily the length of my stay enabled me to spread out the appointments over the course of ten days, leaving me plenty of time to see everyone I wanted to see and still have one day or two to sit around doing absolutely nothing. And that day is today!
02. Bad – Guilt – Ah, those inevitable questions about life choices one must face whenever we return home after a long, long time away. It’s always about how you don’t call enough, or you don’t make enough money, or you haven’t done one million different things you should have done by now. Questions mount about how long you think you want to live where you’re living, or work where you’re working, or do whatever it is you’re doing when you’re not working to barely cover your rent. Then there’s the guilt about leaving home and never visiting, or moving three-thousand miles away. To placate or not to placate? That is the question.
01. Good – Free Money – With the exception of buying records and the occasional meal or two, I haven’t had to spend any money all week. My father pays for whatever meals I eat with him, my mother (and in one instance my old boss) is the same. Home-cooked meals are always free. Ian paid for dinner last night. Drinks were free. Jack and Ken constantly provided beer and wine. I came home with $3 in my pocket, and somehow I have $70 now without even making a trip to the bank. Yeah, I guess hanging around at home can actually be pretty sweet. At least momentarily, the free money that comes with staying under the same roof as your parent(s) provides you with a break from worrying about how the fuck you’re going to afford to not ever have to move back in with your parent(s).
The Clash – Clampdown – (buy this album)
Cursillistas – St. Leonard
Stereolab – Tempter – (buy this album)
Tengir-Too – Belek (Gift) – (buy this album)
Dillard Chandler – Cold Rain And Snow – (buy this album)
