my home is boston

being "home" in north carolina is seriously a void that pulls away all my motivation and creativity. maybe it's just that i fall back into a lifestyle where i didn't try to leave the sphere of my home and school and explore the real nc. but nonetheless i feel no drive to either go out and photograph what could be amazing landscape, or to go and explore a more grown up raleigh that sprung up after i left for boston.

maybe there's something to having a large holiday event. that means, you arrive at some family member's house for an evening, have dinner, mingle with family, catch up, do what you gotta do, then the next day it's done and you are free to return to your normal life. there's no reason for me to really stay in my old (but not really the same) room again, live at home for a few days as if that would bring back the olden times. and then when we go our separate ways at the end of the break, it's only to a sense of dissatisfaction and time lost, and an era never to be recovered.

tomorrow i am going to escape the monotony of home and go out with some friends from college. hah, even here i try to bring boston back. but maybe i'm only trying to escape from the guilt that we are failing to fulfill our duties as a family during the holidays. of course i feel guilty for not really trying to be familial. but sometimes i'd really just rather stay in boston. alas, that is the shared sentiment of more than just a few of my friends, and mostly the asian ones.

maybe the disfunctionality arises from the incredible generation AND cultural gap between our parents, who immigrated as poor intellectuals, and us, who grew up embracing american culture and barely clinging on to any old customs and values our parents had. but this gap was also greatly exaggerated by my transition from high school in north carolina to college in boston. so now there is a time, distance, and social distance that prevents me from really finding satisfaction in life in north carolina, which is probably better consigned to my memories of a colorful and hopeful past. my future, and my present, is in boston, and my mind longs for it even on the first night back home.