a sense of place

So. went to a crazy party on saturday; three hundred people crammed into three stories of warehouse-art-show-extraordinaire, where there was little breathing space and a myriad of great outfits. in other words, it was incredibly intimidating. it is a well-known fact that i fear social situations, and social situations incorporating art and artists are by far the most terrifying. but i survived with the help of two tiny adorable friends, a lot of whisky, a tall dark and handsome doctor and an occasional squeeze on the bottom from some hyperactive social creature that i'm "not dating". so i survived and actually managed to enjoy myself, if just barely.

and once again i ask myself - why am i here rather than there? there is something about this city that overwhelms me. something about its scale, its social problems, its constant layer of dampness, its grey rain grey concrete grey skies, and the bouts of utter callousness that i encounter from time to time. of course most of these things exist in victoria, and if they don't it is not because victoria is this idyllic land but rather because victoria has different problems relating to a smaller-scale whitewashed capital city.

but there was something so hopeful and exciting about the show on saturday. something about realizing that there truly is this bubbling art community in victoria, that there is a big group of people working together and creating something really great. and this relates to something i miss deeply about victoria-that ability to see its community as a whole, an entity, rather than a bunch of isolated groups scattered across an enormous area. so far i haven't really experienced any of that excitement in vancouver, not because it doesn't exist but because i know so few people, and because i have yet to uncover the exciting creative communities that are there.

but yeah, it is just so nice to go back to that city where i have a real feeling of connection and place. that familiarity that chased me away is also what seems to be keeping a big chunk of my heart there while i simultaneously try to eke out some sort of real existence here. it makes things a little tricky. but i spent five years in victoria making those connections, going to university and growing up. so it's inevitable that i will keep it close to my heart, and its inevitable that my community there will be wider than the one i've managed to scrape together in my three plus months here.

i can't help but wonder what will happen when (if?) i decide to do my master's somewhere other than here (which is likely). will i become even more fractured, with bits of my life in cities across the country? with bite-sized chunks of my beating heart scattered everywhere that there is something or someone that i love? this is the blessing and curse of our generation, it seems: the overwhelming number of choices we have spread out in front of us. how can we ever choose from so many seemingly arbitrary options? how can we balance this freedom to move and change with the need to have a sense of place and community?