PickledCherub

Time is tick tick ticking away as I prepare to return to the homeland, the fatherland, the birthplace of all things inherently Amy: Long Island. I have just begun to say that I'm from Long Island instead of saying New York. I switched to saying New York when I moved out West because most people don't immediately know where Long Island is, or they have these awful misconceptions about my amniotic environment. But now I relish in smashing the Long Island stereotypes by admitting, up-front, where I am from. Also, I think Dorothy Grambell, the creator of Cat and Girl has inspired me to accept the Long Island in me. Claire always makes an issue of how East Coast my behavior is--meaning that I'm initially rude to almost everyone I meet. I find it charming. Conversely, she is always shocked that I can strike up conversations with strangers who are much older than me, such as our adventure at the Hedge House with Pat, Cindy, and their six-month old Stephanie.

So, it's back to Long Island, back to my grandparents' old house that my brother took over after they died. The house is in New Hyde Park, two blocks from Queens. The only things within walking distance are the train station (LIRR), one mile, the drugstore Genovese and the grocery store Edwards, two blocks in the Old Navy shopping center, the Dress Barn, about a mile, and the Greek diner, five blocks. My great uncle's old house is about five blocks away, too. Alex said that there's a bar down the street that we can walk to, so I'm sure, I'm hoping, that me and the bro will go get wasted in a local dive.

The town I grew up in, Smithtown, is a forty-five minute drive (give or take 15 minutes) from the New Hyde Park house. Every time I've gone back to see it, to see the old tromping grounds--the Friendly's and Nick's Pizza and the Protestant Graveyard, I feel a bit nauseous. The house itself looks really nice, a lot nicer than when it was just me and mom and we didn't have the time or money to landscape or install new fancy-pants doors. Though we did take down a lot of walls and put new ones up. Frankly, a lot of stuff went down in that house that I'd rather forget about.

Well, in other news, I got into a Masters Program at U Chicago: Masters in Humanities. It's a year-long program. I don't know . . . I don't know if that's the path I want to take right now, but there are some cool tracks in the program: Film Studies, Writing, Classics, Language, Education. It's a relief to get in somewhere, and I don't know if I'm so into Comp Lit anymore. I'd rather be an anthropologist and scrutinize people. Find out how they're different.

Watched the Michel Gondry DVD last night--wasn't so much interested in the videos as the short films. We're a lot alike, Michel Gondry and I: we both make movies, we both drum, we both are obsessed with our childhoods.