Transcending or Missing Reality

Something I started in my notebook that I carry around in my purse:

We watched Tootsie in Grant Park tonight. As we were leaving, I stopped to use the bathroom, and so walked back to the car on my own, past Buckingham Fountain, along Columbus, looking at the skyline. And I realized I feel the same way now about Chicago as I did about New York right before I came home for the summer. I really love Chicago. I miss the skyline when I'm gone.

This summer feels like a dream. Like it seems totally separate from the rest of my life, stuck in a time by itself. This is strange, because New York seems like a dream too, or a movie I watched, but not actually something I lived, no my life. So I'm wondering what my reality is, if everything that's supposed to be real seems surreal, or fictional, or outside myself. If reality is our perception of our experiences, and I perceive the recent periods of my past as theatre, that I watched but didn't experience, then what is my reality then, but a fiction?

As I was walking tonight, I was blowing my own mind by thinking about how quickly things change. In 3 days I'll be in New York, in 5 days I'll be living in my new apartment for the year. I've got 3 more nights here in my bed, in my room that I grew up in, until I come home, maybe at Thanksgiving, maybe in December. This is identical to the feeling I had right before coming home for the summer, as I was spending my last few days in my dorm. Temporality always gets my mind spinning in circles until I feel like I can't see straight even when I'm just watching my feet moving forward on the sidewalk.

I desperately need to get back to school; I need to see the beautiful group of people that inspire me to do my best work and try new things and be ridiculous and serious and inquisitive. I haven't seen some of my best friends in essentially four months now. This whole situation is absurd. Either I'm in New York, with one group of friends, and loving all of that, but missing my Chicago life and people here, or I'm here and loving home, but missing New York. I thought maybe after I'd settled in at NYU, the feeling of being torn between two worlds would go away, but it doesn't really seem like that's changed, yet, at least.

I miss Nic. And I don't want to be 1000 miles away from him. And I can't wait to get back to school. I don't know how to deal with the things I'm feeling right now. I think things will be better once I get back into the routine of the city, and I can glean energy from the pulse of the streets that I'm itching to walk. I need to get away from here, at least for a while. And I suppose it's going to be longer than a while, but I can deal with that. It's just that right now I don't want to be tied up in the emotions of this place.

I think that's it for tonight. I'm trying to finish up my play reading for the summer so that I can read my last couple books of the summer, The Gospel of Inclusion and The Schwa Was Here (which is sort of the inspiration for my COW). Goodnight, blogosphere. Wow. My computer recognizes that as a word. I didn't expect that one. One more surprise for the day.