breathe out

The holiday season is always hectic for everyone. I don't think I'd ever experienced, or truly understood that until this year. I was home in Maryland for about 10 days total; the whole time rushing around running errands, seeing friends or just being occupied by something.

My family spent about a week in Arizona, like we do every year. This was the first year without my grandmother. It's funny how when someone leaves us, everyone else sort of scoots in to fill the space they left behind. It's like when you have birds on a wire, and one flies off, all the rest shove down. But we can only fill so much, there will always be a void, I think. My aunts, my mother, my cousins and I can make the cookies, the salad dressing, the mashed potatoes and do the wrapping, the cleaning and the laundry. But Christmas just didn't feel like Christmas this year.

New traditions must be forged, though in the company of ones still in tact. We did our annual cousins movie trip and our big family party. But they were held at my aunt Suzy's house instead of Grandma's. Oh that's another thing, it will always be Grandma's house. I mean no disrespect to Grandpa, but that's just how it's always been.

She's everywhere in that house on 44th Lane in Glendale. Her scent is still on her clothes, and her touch still lingers on the pots and pans and the candy dish that sits on top of the clothes dryer.

It was a very bittersweet Christmas, but I'm glad to be back at school. It's not that I'm an escapist, I am perfectly happy to face sadness and grief, but there are moments when you're ready to just breathe out and let the sadness disappear, surrounded by friends and family.

I'm excited about winter term this year. I'm taking a class about interactive and new media. Essentially, it's a class about Internet publishing and digital imaging. We had our first class yesterday (they started school on a Friday, I know, I'm taking it up with the proper authorities) and I think the class shows a lot of promise to be something both informative and engaging in terms of artistic growth and thought development.

I'm going to try to blog more this month. I've fallen off the wagon a bit. I'm going to be heavily engrossed in my search for an internship. So, if anyone knows anyone in the art publishing industry who's looking for an eager student to fill an internship position. Call me.