I'd Rather be Bowhunting.

Yesterday was just chilly enough that we had to wear fall jackets on our walk through German Village. Tyler and I found a nice spot in front of a coffee shop where we people-watched and where he spotted this bumper sticker. The funniest part was the man who stepped out of the car so did not look like a bowhunting kinda guy. Purchase of the day: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. That and a funnel cake from Dirty Frank's hot dog diner. Lemme tell ya, it was amazing! I considered taking a photo of it in all its powdered sugar glory, but we scarfed it.

Senior Year.

Today is my last first-day of school.

I didn't buy any new clothes or clean new notebooks and school supplies like usual. This year seems pretty laid-back. To get ready for the first day of school I did laundry and ate a bowl of cereal. There is a sense of finality in all of this: so much talk about thesis shows and portfolios. It's like the end of an era, but not in a bad way. It's exciting.

This morning I thought about my first day of kindergarten, when my mom followed me onto the school bus so she could get a photo of me squished in the seat with two other five year old girls. Ever since then I've been so embarrassed to take the traditional "first day, new book bag" picture, but today I thought I'd be great to have that again, one last time. Photographic evidence of my educational round-trip.

Sixteen years later I have a cute apartment, a handsome boyfriend, a real-ish job, and knowledge about art (an understanding of myself as an artist) that I wouldn't trade for the world. Not always sure how it happened, but I'm lucky. And so content! It's gonna be a great year.

Home.

After almost three years with a for sale sign in the front yard my parents finally sold the Seville house. I was devastated when they told me that they were moving from that beautiful old farmhouse where I grew up. But I've had a few years to get used to the idea and now a new family lives there. I hope they enjoy watering the sunflowers on summer evenings as much as I did. And I'll never forget how smooth the red stairs felt; the edges were rounded down from a century of bare feet.

The concept of home is something that I'll never quite be able to grasp. It's some sort of equilibrium between the land, the notion that you are completely safe when there, and family. It just feels so right. I've tried to make myself a little version of home in Columbus; I have so many loving friends here who are my city family and who I'm going to miss terribly when we graduate. Maybe it's that change that I'm afraid of; the impermanence of moving from home to home that all twenty-somethings experience. The scene in Garden State when Andrew talks about the loss of comfort that he had as a child always makes my heart hurt a little:

"You'll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day, one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know? You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place."