I am sitting in a beach-blue painted sun room staring out at Vashon Island across the Puget Sound. In true west side fashion, the sky is slate and promising rain. I, of course, forgot to pack an umbrella.

After a five hour drive from Spokane to Seattle, I arrived last night at my summer abode. In response to a desperate plea for lodging that I had posted on Facebook a couple months back, a friend from high school graciously offered me a spare room in her parents’ house. Apart from doing odd jobs, such as organizing a mountain of CDs into the entertainment system, I’m living free of charge for two entire months while I finish up my Math degree at the University of Washington.

Last night I plopped into a big comfy bed, utterly exhausted from the drive and the Corner House birthday hoopla from the night before. Tired as I was, thoughts ricocheted noisily off the walls of my brain, preventing sleep from overwhelming me until about midnight. I awoke early this morning still buzzing with excited uncertainty regarding the next two months.

I don’t have a single reasonable expectation for what will happen within the next hour, much less within the span of the entire summer. I’m in a big city known for coffee, wet weather, fish, and grunge. I, on the other hand, am completely unknown and open for reinvention. For all Seattle knows, I’m a patchouli-wearing vegan, an aspiring Broadway actress, or an uptight Math geek by day and poetry-reading wino by night. The possibilities are fabulously infinite.

Whether I decide to devote myself to investigating Kabbalah or remain relatively unchanged is yet to be determined. Either way, I’ll keep you posted.