well, hello, 2008. lookit all the unicorns you brought with you!

Here in Curry land (man, that makes my apartment sound so much more exciting than it really is) we're ushering in 2008 with risotto, a new rug, a vacuum, a fucking awesome new 10" Henckles chef's knife, and a new furry brown blanket for the bed. It's January, and it may be the first January on record that I do not absolutely hate on first sight, for reasons that I can't quite figure out. Usually I hate January. Hate hate hate it. But it feels very peaceful so far. Even warm.

I am sitting next to some candles, which might explain it.

I think it just feels good to be back home, and if you had told me months ago that this little beige square would feel as homey as it does, I would have slapped you in the face and then gone out to buy cigarettes. (Just like Grandpa! No, just kidding. He's dead.) I should also probably rename this blog If you had told me months ago, since it is the phrase I keep returning to. But it is such a small miracle some days that I feel as home here as I do. I think, too, that January isn't such a dread this year because I want to do so much. The little calendar above the desk is full of things and deadlines and notes to myself, and although it felt pretty awesome to sit in Buffalo and ski and drink beer and eat sausage, I just sort of wanted to get the holidays over with and get back to life and work in Madison. Which, again, months ago would have made me punch you in the face.

Things around here are starting to make sense. I hate to quibble with a girl who loves cookies and potatoes as much as I do, but Jean was wrong about one thing--records are not best in the spring. They are probably pretty awesome in the spring, when you can open the windows and subject your neighbors to "The Gambler," but they have to be best this year, when the nights are dark and you can light a bunch of tea lights and come home and sit on the couch with the dog.

You can't think too deeply with a record playing, or at least you can't for any length of time, because the house falls silent after twenty minutes and you have to hop back up and flip the vinyl. It's good to listen to them, the hiss and pops, and slide your father's Tom Rush debut record out of the sleeve--very carefully, because your father has threatened you with bodily harm if you scratch his Tom Rush debut record--and listen to the same songs he did forty years ago. There is something deep in a the sound of a vinyl, something that a million people before me have stated in much more elegant and pompous and irritating hipster ways, but let's say this: they are right, and on long winter nights there is little better than melding the old with the new and listening to records while typing poems on your laptop and listening to the dishwasher and the periodic sighs of the dog sleeping next to you.

I want this year to be an even keel, the way 2007 was at the very end, and I want it to be as peaceful as the nights in April were, when a bunch of us could just sit on the couch and not speak for whole chunks of time, and I want it to be exhilarating as the last summer days were in June and even August, when everything was a little shaky but full of potential. I want this year to be the year that blends the best of the past five and leads me into the next five years of my life. In the last five I graduated school, bought a dog, broke up with the college boyfriend, moved everything to the Midwest, fell in love, and received an MFA. I have a stronger sense of myself now than I ever did, and I finally feel like I've been through enough in the past that when tough things happen I have a small history to reflect upon and remind me that yes, this sucks, but I've been through other stuff, and find some familiarity and know that I'll get through this, too.

Over break I saw people that I haven't in a few years, and heard from others I haven't in a few months, and it what shocked me was the easy familiarity with which we spoke over spicy coconut soup and beers and cigarettes in the rain and text messages. I didn't realize until then that I thought so much of me sort of evaporated when I went out to Minnesota. I guess that I sort of moved into this mode of categorizing everything as "before grad school" and "after grad school," and I had sort of convinced myself that I had nothing still tying me back to New York and the Northeast. Like so much of my energy was being expended in Minnesota--because it was so crazy, so fucking uneven and high and low all at the same time--that I had let myself think that it was the complete and final definition of my life. And although so much of who I am is because of that time in Kato, and because of the people I met there, this break reminded me that I was someone before my address was Highland.

It was like the last piece fell into place. Since moving here, one thing that's comforted me is knowing that even though the people I used to live with aren't in the same zip code, all I have to do is call or mail them. I am comforted in knowing that even if they aren't right down the road, they are somewhere out there. And this break reminded me that there's more of them than I remembered in the East, too. And then I thought about how you can move through life falling in and out of touch with people, speaking every couple of months, but even when you're not speaking you carry each other with you in little ways. Something reminds you of them, and them of you, and it might be a few more years before you really meet up again, but you're not done. It's a pretty abstract concept, and I know we're careening dangerously into teenage journal mode, but it's also very warming. And a good feeling to take with me as I step into 2008.

Now then. Since this pretty much is a journal entry, I'm going to go decorate the rest of this space with some unicorns. Have a great year, kids. We'll all get through it.