in and out of dislocation

brain dump continues...

it's funny to remember how a few weeks ago, i was so incredibly distraught to be leaving pullman, to be leaving the insane rollercoaster that was the end of the semester...and now that i should be happy to be going back, i'm really not.

ohio has always been home and pullman has always been runner-up...there's never really been competition. so i've never had to really compare the two in detail. however, sometime in the last year or so (maybe having something to do with the reality that i'm going to be there for four more years) i've become attached to pullman and the people there on a much deeper level. i've put myself out there more and as a result become more connected to a lot of things other than myself (and madden 2003). it's been really, really good for me (and hopefully for other people), and it's also meant that this break was the first time that ohio had some serious competition for the title of "home"...

i loved being home for break, especially in the last week or so when i finally got up to kent and got to spend some time with my friends from college (and etc.). what it taught me is that even though i'm a huge fan of a lot of things and a lot of people going on in pullman, the primary problem with it as a home is the same problem that i've always had with it: it's not a place anyone wants to live, it seems. i mean, i do. just not anyone else. everybody comes and goes (from my perspective as a grad student) largely in 2-year cycles. there's just enough time to get attached and, bam, everyone's gone. it's pretty hard for me to deal with in general, but specifically, though a lot of the people i've met over the years in pullman have been some of the greatest, sweetest, smartest, most interesting people i've ever had the pleasure of knowing, in some ways nothing beats the experience of living with someone for four years, or going out to dinner with someone pretty much every week for six years. a lot of the people in kent know me as well as, or in some ways even more than, my family...and that's a level of intimacy that i'm generally barred from knowing people in pullman on simply because of the two-year rule...there are exceptions, of course, but i guess going home and having to finally stop taking the people there for granted (in the sense that they are no longer exclusively my only friends and family) just made me realize that sometimes nothing beats longevity...well, and the awesome to inspire that longevity in the first place.