1421 Miles: A Tale of Epiphany in Four Parts

Good timesIt takes three hours to travel the 1421 miles from Houston, Texas to New York City. A short trip, really, unless it's the first time you've left home by yourself, in which case it's three hours that you will inevitably spend dwelling on all of your hometown memories and all of the memories you hope to make in your new town, New York. Your New York town. The amount of anxiety I had about moving that hung in the air during my plane trip to New York in August (not a round-trip ticket, I noticed while waiting to board) was so palpable and suffocating, in fact, that just as the fire burst from the jets and the plane tilted back mid-air, I couldn't breathe. Stuffed in coach in between two complete strangers, struggling to swallow and inhaling as slowly and with as much control as possible, I thought I would die. Suddenly I felt a tap on the shoulder and opened my eyes to see the flight attendant. My dad got frequent flyer benefits and I could upgrade to first class if I wanted, she said - first class, where a big bottle of cold water and a warm face towel waited patiently for me and my panic attack. An angel? An epiphany? Maybe not, but it definitely put things in perspective. The difficult part of the journey is only as bad as you allow it to be, and almost never as bad as you fear. Someone mentioned in their blog post at the beginning of the year that coming to college was, in itself, a travel fiction for them because the environment of the city is so drastically different from the environment they had grown up in for the past eighteen years. This is true for me too, and reflecting on certain experiences I've had in the city, experiences that I'm sure I never would have been able to have at home, I know that my "pilgrimage" was not in vain. There is no better place than New York, a veritable microcosm of the world, in which to glean insight into my own world.

A Concise Chinese English Dictionary For Lovers
Mеня зовут Paige. я родилас и выросла в городе Houston, в штате техас. это большой, некрасивый город но я его очень люблю. теперь я живу в нью-йорке. я учусь на первом курсе в университете. вчера я купила матрёшку на рыноке в Brighton Beach. когда я купила матрёшку я говорила по-русски. я всегда говорю по-русски когда я езжу в Brighton Beach. я думаю, что я скорее независимая.

My name is Paige. I was born and raised in the city of Houston, in the state of Texas. It is a big, ugly city but I love it very much. Now I live in New York. I'm a freshman in college. Yesterday, I bought a matryoshka doll at a market in Brighton Beach. When I bought the matryoshka doll, I spoke in Russian. I always speak in Russian when I go to Brighton Beach. I think I'm rather independent.

Mosquito Coast
One of the benefits of having an art major as a suitemate is that you can commission them to do projects for you, invent things for you. Sitting on the floor, working on the paint-by-numbers I had bought at Pearl Paint when I accompanied my suitemate, M, to get her school supplies, I decided that we needed a shelf for the kitchen and she suggested she fashion one from any leftover wood in the sculpture room. I decided my coffee thermos was boring and she suggested she design a new cover for it. And when her roommate finally got too annoying and she built a canopy covering her entire bed to block out the noise of 4 A.M. phone conversations and music sessions and gum popping, complete with interior mood lighting (a string of Christmas lights), I decided I needed one too and she suggested she make it my early birthday present.
In theory, the canopy was perfect. M and I happened to have the luck that we became friends quickly, but didn't necessarily click with our respective roommates and were thus stuck in a very mismatched four-person suite. Having never lived with anyone before, I could not have anticipated how much living with a person acts as a sort of magnifying glass, constantly focused on that person's worst and most chafing qualities. What could be better then, I thought, than to be walled in on three sides in my bed, in complete reclusion? It would be just like at home, where I have my own room, and I like it.
So, when the canopy collapsed one night in the middle of a good dream, I urged M to do everything she could to fix it the next morning. It collapsed again and again, night after night, until finally I gave up. After the last reconstruction and the last subsequent collapse, I sat cross-legged on my bed and my heart sank. In one final attempt to make the brutal reality of living with someone more bearable, I took the Christmas lights, now tangled within the rubble of my once-great haven, and taped them to the wall above the bed. It was a little reassuring. Sometimes you just can't escape.

The Sun Also Rises
"I thought you said you knew."
"I do."
"Please don't be proud right now. I'm cold and I want to get there."
"Well it's cold in New York. Maybe you should have worn clothes."
"I'm in costume. You're not even in costume." He looked stupid.
"Take my jacket then if you're going to complain. I'll call him."
I was angry too because if I had messed up the directions he would have made me feel terrible.

We got to the place eventually, strangers saluted me in my sailor hat, he looked at the big black Xs on my hand. And he laughed for the first time that night. This place was completely foreign to me. Even the people seemed foreign, and that was all I could think about as I chewed a caramel from the bowl of candy on the bar. I stood out of the way to observe. This was his kind of music on stage, a band I had never heard of. He saw someone he knew.

"Who are you?"
"I'm not Jesus. Everyone says I look like Jesus tonight, but I'm not in costume."
"Not Jesus. You should cut your hair. And the sandals in the cold... well I'm not in costume either. She can tell you about that." He looked at me and grinned and I just waited to be introduced.
"I always wear sandals though."
He wanted a cigarette so we followed the smell of smoke and the warehouse opened up onto a rooftop. The three of us stood in a semi-circle and I did not complain about the cold because I knew he expected me to. The night was deep and dark but still a little purple from pollution and the skyline was industrial, and shorter than I was used to in Manhattan.

"First time in Brooklyn?" Not Jesus took a puff and looked at the skyline instead of me.
"First time in New York City." He always answered for me, which was funny and also annoying because I hadn't known him for long.
"You came at a bad time. It's changed a lot since they cleaned it up and with the war and everything, well, you know. It won't ever be like the seventies. You know, real New York." He still looked away, slowly puffing smoke as if recalling the grime and edge of New York past was putting a strain on his memory. He must have been about 22 years old. It seemed ridiculous to me. "Now edgy is this hipster shit. This must be like a total foreign country to you."

He laughed. I looked at my hands nervously and all I saw were the black Xs and I laughed too.

On The Road
The best night of my life was on a drive to Austin, a bunch of us Houston kids stuffed into my best friend's boyfriend's old (very old) Ford Bronco, going to see some random band on 6th Street, the windows down, the back window blown out, my best friend riding shotgun singing along to everything, my other friend stuck in the trunk doing that funny impression he always does when he wants to break even a second of silence, everyone else sticking their heads out the window to get a push of wind in the face, trying to keep our eyes open, with nothing but trees rushing by save for the occasional small sign - Texas Highway: 290 - or a billboard for Buckee's. Some weekends we would make the three-hour drive (two hours if you really go) to Austin just for the hills, and that view. It's funny because, coming to New York, I figured I'd be having the most exciting experiences of my life, that that was when my life would really start, but looking back now I realize that nothing will compare to that memory of being on the road, and ironically feeling so at home.