Approaching summers always seem surreal. Summers kind of float in dead-time, at least for me, because I'm reflecting on the year that's just ended and yearning for the year to come. This summer seems particularly trippy - it is the first year I will not spend a significant amount of it at home; it is the first year I will take a vacation for myself; it is the first year I have a 'real' job.

I keep having dreams about being in New York. They are quiet dreams of wandering the Upper East Side, on a cool morning near the end of summer, walking beside the wall that separates Central Park from Fifth Avenue. They are of forgotten playgrounds, broken water fountains, slow traffic, street kiosks. They are of staring out of Zack's second-floor window, eyes meeting with kids dancing in a feeble-looking gyser forcing bubbles of cold water out of concrete. They are of the damp smell of old apartments and the dry smell of steam heat emitting from radiator pipes, the old white paint slowly cracking off, like a damaged eggshell. They are of my favorite mornings in my not-so-favorite-summers. They are the moments I felt grounded.

I really don't want to go to graduate school unless it's in New York City. That's where I can think the most without having the rest of my body float away with my head in some trippy transcendental state.

Being in new relationships always confuses me, because there's a really terrifying period of time between the initial feeling of like and the eventual feeling of falling in love that is kind of devoid of any feeling for me. And I always worry that that feeling will never go away, and that I've started something for no good reason. So far it has always passed.

I'm always waiting for things to pass.