begin again

I spent the majority of my Sunday afternoon browsing cigar box labels, antique maps, and brooches at the Georgetown Flea Market.

I've never had an appreciation for antiques. I find them… well… used. Perhaps it's because my mother has more than once forced my siblings and I to walk around her house with masking tape and a sharpie and label every single item in arms reach that we would like to have should she keel over dead in the next six months. I find the process slightly depressing – taking on someone else’s trash, even if they deem it treasure. My closets are bursting as it is, and because I’ve changed residences eight times in the last nine years, I like throwing away things that are no longer useful.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the surveying of goods. The warm air and the prospect of finding a real treasure. The slightly disheveled purveyors, smelling of smoke, and offering to "discuss the price of that lamp-painting-necklace-goblet-or-tchotchke." It's rare however, that I'll actually buy something.

After the past month, including a week-long vacation to St. Maarten which provided me with a lot of time to think about myself and not work-rent-bills-budget-politics-news-family-health, I realize that I was beginning to consider this blog an antique. Something that, while charming and worn, is old news. Reading back through my own archives late last night, I considered the fact that this blog holds a lot of my past – the last few years of memories in this remarkable city and some experiences that seem so distant from my present-day self that were they not written down, I’m not sure I would clearly remember them as my own.

About the time the volume of my writing slowed, I met someone who’s just tops. I’ll call him H. I’ve written about him a bit, but I’ve been very cautious. Mostly because I wasn’t sure if I wanted my relationship to be a focus or a backdrop of the blog. I wasn’t sure how it all fit together. I’m still not. And… as silly thirteen-year-old girl of me as it sounds, I was busy… and happy… and distracted. Sue me.

I’ve also been spending a lot of time in the kitchen. Baking and cooking but mostly baking. A lot. I think that any normal person needs creative outlets to feel secure and whole. I use the term creative loosely and not to imply that one should sit and make dream catchers out of feathers and twine every weekend. Although if you do, yay for you. Some people fish, some play flag football, some go to the dog park, others write, photograph, cook… sometimes I’m completely overwhelmed by all the things I still want to do and learn. In a way, I think I transferred my writing energy off the page and into the oven. I’m hoping I can find a way to merge the two. If so, it’ll be delicious.

I’m not promising anything spectacular as I’m a bit rusty. But I’ll give it an honest go. I’ll also do my best to fill in the gaps of the last few months – so although I’m starting in the middle, it’ll feel like a beginning.