oklahoma

so i'm here. it's been three weeks, perhaps more. but i still think of toledo as 'home'. am i being obstinate or is it inevitable, that i will miserable on and off for the next three years?



sometimes i feel like i am back in time. not just because of the lack of internet, or lack of culture, or lack of design sensibility, etc, etc. but mostly because i am doing what people have been doing in america since its founding: moving west. moving to unfamiliar place and not knowing anyone, or how long they'd be there, or whether their crops would die from drought or be swept away by floods, or anything. if i think of myself like that, i feel less like a person in a dirty apartment with cigarette burned carpeting, and more like a long-suffering hero.

we went to dallas on saturday, a roadtrip of sorts. i loved everysecondofit. mostly for the ikea there (!) and buying things (!) while we drove through the suburbs, etc, i realized how many stores don't exist in my world anymore. so kind of like a breath of fresh air but also like an uneasy moment of wonder -- what exactly am i missing? products? consumerism? or really is it just the 'choice' that i am missing. the option to eat something besides tex mex or fast food or bbq? the choice to shop at a place with basic sanitation? the choice to look at beautiful things everyday?

how do i figure out which parts of my new reality to accept and which to reject? this is what i want to know.