forever young

I have just finished watching the entire catologue of Gabby Miller's YouTube videos - everything from Pandas fighting in the gym, pandas in the library and at the lesbo club, to Gabby's grandmother wishing everyone a Happy New Year, reciting the Ballad of Yukon Jake or the player piano playing music recorded in 1922 from Millerama. For those of you don't know, Gabby Miller was someone I went to school with at Reed College. We met my Junior year when I returned from Russia in the spring, and then we lived together in a house called The Stables my senior year. She was and remains one of my favorite people on the face of the earth. Sitting here watching the videos, I have come to the realization, and maybe I've known it all along, that the people I met at Reed are people that will remain my favorites forever. There is something about the people I met there that make them most valuable. Aside from a particular best friend in Philly and my family members, they constitute that one circle of friends that I will always come back to. And now that we have all graduated and entered the real world, it's kind of funny to see where we all ended up:

Gabby goes back and forth between California and Vietnam, Serene opened up an art gallery in post-Katrine New Orleans, Sunny Daly is studying in Cairo, Egypt, Jesse is organizing lunch-ladies in Oregon and playing music, Layla is baking vegan goods in San Fran (as far as I know), Keith spent two years in Prague studying film, Babbits is living the dream in Portland at the Fridge soon to take a roadtrip with me across the states in summer 2009, Dan Denvir is living in Quito, Ecuador playing journalist/community organizer protesting all things evil and leading Caterwaul Quarterly (which I'm proud to help out with) while his girlfriend Thea holds down the fort in Philly studying for her PHd, let's see... Wilkes is somewhere on the West Coast getting his photography on magazine covers and being too busy to communicate, Julia Bean works for a neon light co. in NYC making rad signs for companies like Adidas, Jacob and Hana, who've got the most amazing track record of all: traveling from New Zealand, Indonesia, across America, and back again to Indonesia, etc etc.

But then there is also the extended network of non-Reed friends that I have kept in touch with: among them Laura - my friend in Germany, Bryan who has recently re-located to Columbia/Venezuela, Sean in NYC, Simona my friend in Morocco, and all my friends in Russia: Denis, Alexey, Albina, Rushina, etc. I feel well-rounded because of this.

I suppose living here amongst archeologists/adult peoples has done me some good in that I can pretend to be more like them, to begin to understand their mannerisms and speech patterns, to begin to take on responsibility and have a real job, but there is also the recognition - in a positive sense - that I know who my people are. My biggest fear, I know now, is being normal. I started to tell myself that I was "becoming adult" and slowly liking the idea of "adulthood" and accepting it as not so bad. Now I'm not being nostalgic in the slightest, I just want to state for the record that being away from friends for three years or so has led me to understand how much I love and respect them - for all their weird behavior, for the way in which you can't really guess what they are going to do or say next, and I will always understand this as the only way to be. It's ingrained in me and it was rather foolish to think I could take it out or tell myself that taking it out was the right thing to do.

What made me realize this? It was many things. It was the reunion with Sunny Daly in Cairo, it was watching all of Gabby's YouTube videos from way back then, it was sharing the stories of the good old days with a new friend, it was playing strip poker for the hell of it last night for the first time since that spring break weekend we took up to Canon beach back in 2005 with Gabbers, Layla, Gene, Jesse, and Isabelle. I do believe that I will remain a child at heart forever and I accept this with great joy.