November 2 – Day 46

I have had a difficult time writing this week. I keep putting it off. Life has been far too real for me to postulate on some vague impressions of the day. We talk and talk here about our theories of art and love and life, and in the end that is all it is - theory. Because while we are talking life happens and eventually we will all have to deal. This morning David left to go home and deal with his father’s impending death and in a few hours Andy will fly back to Los Angeles to bury the only parent he had left. We spend all this time forming hypotheses on the future of art perhaps so that we won’t have to deal with the actuality of the present, but it is here and it is unavoidable. At this moment I feel terribly fortunate and terribly spoiled. I have spent so much time thinking about what is missing I have missed what is right in front of me. I have so many amazing people in my life who love me unconditionally despite my best attempts to push them away. Before I left to come to Moscow I spent two weeks in Missouri, which were two of the hardest and yet most joyous weeks I have ever had in the place I never really wanted to call home. At one point in my stay, my father and I were driving though the country and he said to me, “Your friends are the family you choose. Your family is where you go when you have no where else to turn.” I have more family than one human being deserves, more love and more support. And I am an ungrateful brat who has taken it for granted for far too long. Tonight I talked online to a friend from LA who I didn’t realize how much I missed. We talked about some of our friendships that have come and gone, and I told him that for the first time I see that things are exactly as they are meant to be. You can choose your friends but your family, blood or not, they choose you. They are there, selflessly, instinctually, when you have not the strength to ask. Sometimes all you need is a reminder that someone somewhere believes that you are of value; someone somewhere wants you to know that you are loved. I hope with all my heart that wherever Andy is right now he knows that he is valued and that he is loved.