rowing song

i got back last night from what i've dubbed my whirlwind tour of baltimore. hilary and i, as you'll remember from my recent post bitching about the expense of amtrak, went home this weekend to sing at st. david's for easter marathon, er, i mean easter vigil/easter morning. seriously, people, we got the easy end of the stick this year: i'm trying to imagine what it'd be like singing a church service practically every night last week and then topping it all off with 9 hours of church in a 24 hour period. but i can't. every time i start to imagine i wet my pants and have to go clean up.

it was really nice being back in baltimore. don't get me wrong, i love new york. it's great. it's new yorkish. we ride the subway and go to bars and have great plans to catch up with old friends and go to shows and all kinds of fancy new york things. but at the same time, i have to agree with something that hilary said to me on saturday as we waited for our train, something that struck me as very poingnant and true: it still feels like i'm playing house in new york.

our apartment's starting to feel a little more like home; boxes are slowly, surely (albeit slower than my poor roommates would like) disappearing and we continue to move in and make our place our own. astoria has become my neighborhood, broadway stop has become my hub. still, though, i feel like it's all pretend--like i get up and put on my fancy clothes (i will never, ever, get used to wearing a tie and slacks every day) and go to work and sell four million dollar condos and then come home and go to my new gym and cook dinner in my new kitchen. and then we eat at our new dinner table and watch our new digital cable and then go to sleep and do it all again the next day. and it all feels made up, like someone else's life.

like my life is back in baltimore: my tiny, shit apartment, my job at hopkins, my neighborhood. and that my life here is just like a really strange vacation, one where you have to worry about jobs and rent and subway fare. this is all passing, i know, because it's part of moving. but last night on the train back, having said goodbye again to phong, watching the sun set out the train window somewhere in northeast maryland, i listened to patty griffin sing

The further I go
More letters from home never arrive
And I'm alone
All of the way
All of the way
Alone and alive

and i knew what she meant.