GLASS EYE

i am still trying to focus on falling back into life here. reverse culture shock is thousands more difficult than the initial change. strange that it is so trying to find a place i belong in my own home. this isn't as hard as the first return last spring, but it certainly hasn't been easy. living with the idea that i really don't know when or if i'll return again is undeniable and makes everything hard to be worth it at all. i just keep telling myself, "only one year and a half, and you'll never have to come back," but it's not doing much so far. it's not as easy as it seems to just get up and go-quite the contrary to how i've been living my life the past year. but after college, then what? in an ideal world, i'd take a year off just to learn spanish in spain, be with my best friends, and eat tortilla and drink sangria and expand a bit. you know. but is that so realistic? i don't know. would it be worth it? certainly so.

now i'm just immersed in studying, which currently happens to be neuroscience. which i'm also currently avoiding. the thing about school is, more often than not, i can't seem to find the purpose in what i'm doing. i'm not actively learning anything worthwhile. all of this is shit. i learned more in six months of partying in a foreign country about life and myself than i probably ever will in that short of a time span again. especially at university. none of this matters to me at all and it's part of the reason i'm quite unhappy here. 

but i am happy. there are just things. you know. like the distance that grows between people. how there's not a real way out of here, at least not for another year. saying bye and not knowing when i'll be able to say hello again. forgetting people's faces, voices.

the one year anniversary mark has really hit me hard. this wasn't something i anticipated but it's certainly true. i still can't believe it's been more than a year. i am so scared i'm forgetting everything. i have nothing else to say. i suppose my head will always be in stockholm eating dinner around a table with four spaniards who argue like it's poetry. shopping in drottninggatan. hearing årstaberg and nästa on the metro. partying with thirty people from so many different places. sledding down the björnkulla hills in the nighttime. naked saunas. hookah in my bedroom and the xx. walking back at five in the morning with everyone, in knee deep snow, sun just rising, possibly still drunk. i'm forgetting everything. but i guess mostly sharing all of these experiences with such beautiful people. i still can't get over it. and knowing i was living the best six months of my life thus far just one year ago is overwhelming; it's so far away and it's never, ever, ever, ever coming back no matter how much i want it.

so for now, i have a new pup. i speak spanish with him because he listens and he doesn't laugh at me. but he also doesn't know if i'm making a mistake so he isn't much of a help in that aspect. also, i suppose the most exciting thing on my camera (since the past month) is this photo of the veins in my mouth. actually cool

weekends are full of converse shoes (and conversation), bottles of wine, running through yard sprinklers, chinese delivery, table dancing, sofa sinking

so to come in this month: the national, neutral milk hotel, midterms, and halloween. i have no time, my days are scheduled by the minute, but i still find time to run (i've been running a lot and i feel really well!) and to be with jesse in the evenings. when he's gone next semester i suppose it will be yet another shock entirely. and i suppose that's almost everything.  reed before the wind lives on, while mighty oaks do fall

//

i won't be vacant anymore
i won't be waiting anymore
i won't be vacant anymore
i won't be waiting anymore
i won't be vacant anymore
i won't be waiting anymore
i won't be vacant anymore
i won't be waiting anymore
i won't be vacant anymore
i won't be waiting anymore

i cant blame you for losing your mind for a little while (so did i)

READ

1. everything is illuminated x
2. book of longing leonard cohen
3. unabridged journals sylvia plath
4. animal farm x
5. tale of two cities x
6. through the looking glass x
7.brave new world x
8. anne of green gables x
9. secret garden x
10. leviathan; paul auster
11. the book of illusions; paul auster
12. the brooklyn follies; paul auster
13. city of glass; paul auster
14. the invention of solitude; paul auster
15.
16.

I SAW LOVE DISFIGURE ME

some say love is a burning thing
that it makes a fiery ring
but i know love as a fading thing
just as
fickl e
as a feather in a stream
honey, i saw love. you see, it came to me
it put its face u p to my face so i could see
yeah,
then i saw love disfigure me
into something i am not recognizing.

see, the cage, it called. i said, "come on in."

i
will
not

open
myself
up this
way again

but my heart is wild, and my bones are steam and i could kill you with my bare hands if i was free.

THE LAND OF LIGHTNING BUGS AND NIGHTMARES

I have spent just nearly over two weeks back in Missouri now. And so, just like that, back to the monotony that comes with a trying schedule, back to the hassle of the average American citizen's social and habitual aspects, and back to the bubble that I live in here. Leaving wonderful cityscapes with life at every hour for a dismal college town in the midwestern United States is never the romantic idea of a welcome home you might imagine, or ones you've seen depicted in romcoms.... mostly it means I spend much of my time alone in a place I don't want to be stuck in.

I spend my time capturing photos of light patterns. Speaking to myself in broken Spanish. Lying around my house without clothes, because, thus far, am living alone. Studying neuroscience, articulation and phonology, language development, and audiology. Attending happy hours. The occasional drink, the occasional netflix marathon, sleepovers, you know, the normal life.

I'm back to the land of many lightning bugs, a vast number of stars above, views of fields, and a bed full of nightmares. Last night I dreamt that I was alone, flying next to a train. It was cut in half, and I could see the inside. It was decorated such as a house in the 1920's, and I saw a portrait of an older woman, a mustard yellow wall, wooden door. (I now know that I dream in color.) There was a ballroom, and a kitchen, where the oven caught on fire. I flew above the burning train. Rested upon a dirty island; there was a cave filling with sand and water, and people were getting trapped inside. I saw their heads trying to reach the surface but they failed again and again. I've never dreamt like this. So vividly or so disturbingly.

I find myself distracted by all the English surrounding me. I no longer have moments of excitement when I hear my own language spoken in public. Instead, I hear things I don't want to hear, listening in on details about people's lives I would rather go on not knowing at all. I begin to stop listening to people all together. I don't hear the words anymore, I hear the rhythm. I don't know if I do it because I'm bored or because I am absolutely used to zoning out when I've lost interest (though it's not as easy now, when no one is speaking Spanish anymore. Because this takes every ounce of effort I have to understand something, it is much easier to forget to listen....) I just hear the sounds. The patterns that form in language. I even do it when I'm talking to myself sometimes. I'm just talking to hear a voice, and the intonation.

I'm not sure if time here goes faster or slower. I don't count the days anymore. I have no timeline and I don't know how much longer I'll be here. For the first time in over one year, I have no prospects of traveling. Katelyn and I are hoping to go to Chicago in November or December; we found a bus ticket for $6. For Spring Break, I have aspirations to visit Andrea in L.A.,  and in May, Tina and I are planning a trip to New York City. But all of these are just ideas and hopes. But I suppose eventually they will turn into, "get. me. the. fuck. out of here's."I'm missing a lot of people and a lot of things. I've left a lot of myself behind, once again. My friends here are just as well, but life here is hard when neither my heart nor my head are in the present.

COMMITMENTS TO CURTAIN LIGHT

hi! if you met me and i met you and we were meeting in some mildly cute and romantic public setting (well, i imagine some quaint bar with blue lights, delicate-to fancy-to tacky decorations, and wooden furniture)

okay, so i ask you, because i'm wondering what you like. "what would you say are your interests?"

"well. i spend a lot of my time studying. i don't think it's an interest per say, but i do like learning. learning makes me feel older, yet i stay the same age, i suppose. i think about the things i've learned since one year ago, and it's at least, something i feel, that is ten years worth of knowledge and experience! i love to learn. i love to talk with people because it is another way to learn. anyone, everyone, and the most important ones are people who are different from myself."

"i like to wake up early, stretch. (must stretch and scream. it's the only way.) make my bed, light candles, make coffee, have a shower, mix peanut butter in my oatmeal. check the weather, dress accordingly. check my schedule, pack accordingly."

"i walk everywhere. i don't like to drive because it makes me anxious. i think it's because other people make me anxious when they're driving. you never know when they're gonna fuck up. i walk to campus. drink my coffee. take note of the clouds, the heat, bird noises, people noises, music noises."

"reading. i like to read. writing, but not really writing just thinking and jotting down those thinks. never following story or plot lines, they become overwhelming and are such a commitment once they're started. i like to photograph things. lately it has been the reflection of light onto surfaces....my bed and blankets, my leg, a wooden floor, a navy wall, through the curtains. and the way the surface creates an image of the light depending on what it passes through to reach it."