I am spending the summer at a writing workshop far from New York. I may be writing less as a result; it takes a concerted effort for me to want to write in so social an environment. Though of course whenever I say I will write less I invariably write more...

I am aware again of how alone I am living in New York. I stretch on the prickly green rug in the living room before I play Dance Dance Revolution alone, and I like it. I mutter curses at myself when my score counter runs out, and when I rate a B I smile and pose. I drink the milk out of my cereal bowl without anyone watching at breakfast. I think about nothing and stare at the woven placemats. At night, I come home to a house which is dark. I sit in a little orb of glow, me and Galataea my computer, my mirror, my perfect blue marble, who delivers the affection of people far away without my having to think about whether they are noticing my bad posture or misinterpreting the note of weariness in my voice.

When I first moved to Sunnyside I would come home from a night out with the friends I was desperately clinging to, descend to the asbestos-floored basement, and cry. It felt like not having a body to curl around in bed, or someone down the hall to cross paths with on the way to brush teeth, was punishment I had unwittingly brought upon myself. I stared at the only window in the basement, at ground level up above my head, like those two feet of flicker were all the only way out.

I grew into being alone, though. About a year ago I finally developed a taste for hanging out with one person at a time rather than marauding with a pack. I'm having to re-orient myself to group life here at the workshop -- deciding when and when not to go out, which is hard because I always worry I'll miss the root of the next inside joke; orienting my schedule to other peoples' for lunch and dinner; trying to make personal connections in a sea of mass small talk. Because many of us are alumns, and because the counselor orientation encourages a lot of emotional openness, there's a feeling of premature closeness which doesn't match the kind of perfunctory conversation we're able to muster at the moment. The uncertainty of it all makes me doubt myself, and I'm vulnerable to opportunistic infections of depression.

It's good to be out of New York, though. Kind of like getting out of an abusive relationship, as so many things are, for me. Perspective on what's unhealthy, even if not all of it is.

Being back at the workshop is strange. My writing urge is paralyzed in the absence of subject matter that feels worthy and true. I compare myself to everyone else; there are some good writers here, all of us grown up and more confident in our voices than college students. I read a fiction piece about nud!ty and social mores I've been playing with out loud the other night, and was panicked by the silence it received. I want to run and hide behind my blog, where the people who like my stuff tell me so and the people who couldn't care less just click away.

The effect of this place is not what it used to be. Not that I'm not pleased to be here. After a year in the touch-and-go Bronx, working in a twenty-year-old program with a bunch of people well-versed in educational theory and child psychology is a blessed relief. But my first time at the workshop was something else entirely -- a shock of green leaves and water and boys with exquisite Virginian accents after years in dry Southern California; an ecstasy of common purpose.

Tonight we hung around the backyard of one of the staff in a nearby neighborhood, drinking beers on the wet grass. I asked LeAnne if she could figure how the magic was different. She said it was more of an inside magic, knowing how the program worked. I say it's like the magic of knowing how a computer works as compared to, say, unicorns. A nuanced magic, rough with disappointments as well as love. The common purpose is still what makes it, for me. We all know what a workshop is, and what about it made it a totemic experience of our teens.

The fireflies also never lose their magic. They're so much less predictable than stars. We have an experienced stargazer amongst us, so everyone spent a lot of time shielding their eyes from the porch light and looking up, but I just unfocused my eyes and looked for the solo green throbs in the trees.