Claridad.

I often find myself wondering why I am such a mess. I think that it generally boils down to the fact that I was born in the wrong country. Now I know that sounds stupid but in all honesty, why the hell was I not born in Latin America? I feel more at home there and with that culture than with my own. The food, the people, the music, the language, everything. But I'll never really fit. No matter how good my Spanish gets, no matter how much time I spend living there, no matter how many songs I know or how much literature I can reference or how politically opinionated I am about Latin American issues, I will always be on the outside looking in. I will always be watching Latin America through a transparent curtain, watching and learning and loving but never being included. How frustrating.

I've moved on from all of the Neruda and am now into a collection of Benedetti poetry. It's lovely because all of the poems remember where they came from. They have distinctive roots. Benedetti allows his poetry to be biased, to be opaque to foreigners, and I can entirely respect and admire that. The poetry is what it is, the countries are what they are, and that is that. No pretending, no glossing over, no exaggerating, no romanticizing. It's refreshing.

At the moment, life is routine. A routine of contented nothingness. There is nothing left to do anymore, not much left to say. It is undoubtedly the beginning of the end. And in the face of inevitable end, there's not much else to do besides laughing and dancing the nights away.

I am not afraid of regretting much. I have been only what I am, and I really couldn't have done it all any other way. The only thing I am afraid of is how alone I am without you. I guess it was foolish to think that these two years would result in any different outcome, but still. It is sad, like we have been playing out this satirical tragedy for two long years and for what? For nothing, really. For loneliness. And although it may have been foolish to imagine things otherwise, I still could not have possibly been prepared for the reality of the end. But I guess that sometimes, there really is nothing else to do but to leave.

"Lento, viene el futuro. Lento, pero viene."

So true, Sr. Benedetti, so true.

La Rose

The Little Prince was so in love with the rose. It didn't happen instantly. He watered her and cared for her, kept her warm, listened to her. He invested in her. The rose was not easy to love. She was difficult and proud, stubborn, almost a narcissist. But the Prince kept watering her, kept listening to her.

He began to look beyond the pride. He did not see the beauty anymore. He couldn't see the love when it happened. It wasn't in the water, it wasn't in the conversations. But that's how he knew it was love. The most important things can't be seen. The love was in all the time he had invested in her, the responsibility he had taken on in caring for her. She tamed him.

The Prince knew that you must take responsibility for that which you tame. It is only fair. You cannot tame something and then expect it to become untame again, to fend for itself, to be alone. The Prince thought that he was taming her as well. But he was not. She was not tame, she did not understand, she did not really see him at all. She enjoyed being kept warm, enjoyed being watered, enjoyed having an admirer. But it didn't really matter if it was the Little Prince or any other thing that came along. She was not about to take responsibility for anything, let alone the Little Prince's heart.

And so he left. He went far, far away. He worried about his rose, he thought about his rose. He still loved his rose. He was still tamed. But he could not be there with her anymore. He had to keep his heart as far away as he could because although it was tamed, the rose would never care for it. He was tamed for nothing. The rose was important because of the time he had spent on her. But he was useless because of the time the rose would not spend on him. The Prince could not keep allowing himself to be tamed for nothing.

There was nothing else to do but leave.

Brown.

I have been sitting here for the last 30 minutes reading through all of the applications that I submitted. All those frustrating days sitting in my cupboard of a bed on campus, pulling my hair out at my kitchen table back home with paperwork strewn everywhere...the years and months and hours put into my future, all summed up into neat little paragraphs of 2000 characters or less.

So yes, I know I have worked hard. Not necessarily academically, but I have worked very hard on myself. I've worked so hard to be the person I want to be, to shape myself, my views, my mind, my core. This work has been more than any grade could ever convey. I know I have worked, just in different ways than most people have.

But still, I have to stand back and ask, "Why me?". To this, my sister would reply, "Valerie, why not you? Who else? Who better?". But she is not here to say that (and I miss her more than she knows) and so therefore I find myself asking answerless questions.

I do not think I will ever know why I get the opportunities that I do. In my head, I am still a 10 year old girl playing kickball with the boys in an open field in Kansas. I am still an awkward 14 year old whose biggest problem is that every morning she pokes her eye with the mascara wand while trying to apply makeup to make herself look older. I am still the stubborn 17 year old who refuses to do half of her schoolwork because she can't see any benefit in spending time writing essays about books that she read 6 years earlier.

I don't know why things happen to me. I am sure that I must be making some kind of choices to influence things, but I don't know what those choices are. It always surprises me that good things can happen, almost like the universe keeps dragging me to exactly where I need to be.

It is comforting to see everyone's lives spreading out before them. It assures me that we all actually do keep breathing after graduation, that we can be real and interesting people even when we are far away from this place. It makes me realize that I will see people again, that we can still be connected, that although we won't live together anymore, phone lines and internet connections and 20 minute train rides and international flights really could be enough to hold it all in place.

I still want to ask, "Why me?". But I think for now it's best if I just shut up, smile, enjoy the sun, and give in to the tidal pull of the world that is urging me out, urging me forward, urging me to let go.

Immortality

You know, in Classical times, the best thing a person could wish for was a legacy. Honor, pride, remembrance. Achilles went off to battle because he wanted to be remembered, because he wanted his name to be whispered across the pages of history, because a man never truly dies if his name remains immortal.

I think, in a much less epic way, that that's what we all really want. We don't want to think it's possible to replace us, to get over us, to live on without us. We want to think that we make the place, we make the people, not the other way around. I feel my own imminent replacement acutely. What do I want to be remembered for? What do you want to be remembered for?

Speaking of memory, isn't it frustrating how your mind always seems to capture the strangest moments in perfect detail? Sometimes, in a moment, you say to yourself, "I must remember exactly how this feels,". But you don't. The moments you try to hold on to slip away the fastest. Maybe that's because you can't plan the things that matter most. The memories that you do hold on to always seem to be unexpected, sometimes superficially insignificant. But in reality, they are usually the most telling moments.

It's extremely hot out. We're sitting with all the windows open, the sounds of the city blowing in with the wind. We sit on the black couch and chainsmoke, barely hitting the ashtray. It's too hot to get dressed, we sit around in our underwear the whole time. I'm drinking boxed white wine. It's cold and tastes wonderful, but that is because I'm too distracted, laughing at your jokes, to actually taste the wine.

I wait until 1:00 a.m. because it's the first time all day that we're alone. I make chocolate brownies and cover them with bathtowels and make you hike all the way up to our spot with me. We don't even have a flashlight. I light a candle on your brownie and sing Happy Birthday. We talk for far too long about how old we are, about how much we've grown up.

I'm running after you. You won't stop. It's cold and the ground is wet. It's late and dark and I'm scared and I don't know what to do. I grab you and we're standing straight underneath a light, highlighted against all the surrounding blackness. You're crying. My heart hurts. I want to sit and watch you cry forever, I want to hold you and feel you sinking into me. It is so real. It feels like you have broken through some wall, even if only for a few minutes, and I'm allowed to see the flood, the pain, the emotion behind everything. You keep turning away from me but it doesn't matter. Now I know that you care.

We're sitting on the steps, listening to jazz music. The weather is perfect, city lights mix together with the stars. We have coffee and crepes. I sit with my arm around you and I want to cry because I'm so proud of the woman you've become and I don't even know why. All we are doing is eating butter and sugar crepes and laughing at the boys sitting behind us trying to hit on us in French. But I am so proud of you that night that I feel like I will burst.

We are laying off the dock, our heads hanging over the side. The world is upside down. The water and air are both so clear that we can't tell which way is up and which way is down anymore. You say something philosophical, probably borderline pretentious. Half of me feels stupid, the other half wants to laugh at you and your self-aware intelligence. So I do laugh. And half of you thinks I'm an idiot, but the other half thinks I'm cute. I can tell. I smile for the rest of the day.

I come back to the room, I've brought you dinner. You are already asleep in your bed. You fell asleep on top of your sheets, in all of your clothes. I've only known you for a week but my heart hurts with how much I love you already, how much I just want to take care of you. I write you a Post-It note in bad Spanish and hope you realize that you are already my sister.

It is autumn but it's sunny. There are a lot of us, all outside enjoying the weather. You jump in the freezing water and swim around for ages. Everyone thinks you are a crazy person. I know you are a crazy person. When you finally come out, you are the palest thing I've ever seen. I wrap you in two towels and try to carry you back. We put you in the shower to warm you up and I realize that you need to be taken care of, that you need someone to look out for you and wrap you up and keep you warm every once in awhile. And I realize that I don't mind being that person one bit, that I actually love taking care of you.

It's summer. I'm wearing men's pants and a white tank top. I leave the party. I'm so upset that tears won't even come out anymore, I am simply shocked. I wander around on the dock and end up at my favorite spot. It is the first time I've really been there alone with nothing to do. I can still hear the music from the party. I finally start to cry. Then I hear you coming up the path behind me. I ask you how you knew where I was. You tell me that you care about me and that you know me, that you just knew I'd come here. I lean into you and cry, you wrap a jacket around me. I know everything's going to be okay.

Like I said, I always remember the strangest moments. But you are all, at least for me, immortal.

Nothingness, To-do Lists, and Clarity

It's the beginning of Easter Break and I officially have nothing to do with myself. Strange. I'm always so busy, always looking to travel. But somehow, this time, I just didn't take the initiative to actually do anything. I could have gone home, but for some reason, I didn't. I really can't explain any of it. All I know at this point is that I find myself with 12 days of nothingness on this campus. As they say, idle hands are the devil's playthings.

I have many applications to fill out. It's like the world is laughing at me. "Ha, Valerie, you thought you were done with applications when you finished your university ones! Ha ha, you were so wrong, fill out 12 other forms now! Decide the rest of your life now! No pressure!". I feel like I am, in reality, simply filling out applications for adulthood. Like I'm filling out a list and trying to check off boxes to make sure I don't end up a homeless person after this place.

To-do list:
Choose a university.
Earn a regular salary.
Work on people skills.
Speak three languages.
Establish lifelong friendships.
Maintain a normal and mature love life.
Rent a Parisian apartment.
Find another (hopefully free) apartment on the other side of the world.

On the plus side, I've finished everything. All of my IAs, everything is in. It's anti-climactic. No one ran over and popped open some champagne for me and said "Congratulations, you managed not to give yourself a stroke while trying to pass the IB!". Nope. Just handed in some papers and moved on with life.

I think I am happy. I want to hold onto this feeling forever. It's much easier to have faith in everything, in destiny or whatever you'd like to call it, when my pillow still smells like he has just rolled out of bed, when I keep finding his clothes all over my room, when I am smoking his cigarettes, when I am still smiling and laughing about conversations we had. These are all clear, concrete things. It is just like when I came back from Uruguay. My head was so empty, my desires so obvious and easy. I want it to stay this way.

As I've pointed out before, idle hands are the devil's playthings. And although I have had fun succumbing to dancing with the devil before, I don't really feel like letting my hands be playthings for Satan any time soon.

Wow, what a strange metaphor. And what a strange week I have to look forward to. And what a strange life.

We Couldn't Bring the Columns Down

I have become so disillusioned with people that it has surprised me. I can't explain it. I've just taken to noticing a lack of humanity in the way we interact, the way we speak to each other. There are no lines that are not allowed to be crossed anymore; everything seems permissible. There are no distinctions between private and public life. People forget who they are because they are so focused on others. Perhaps we are too immature to simply leave each other alone once in awhile or, more frighteningly, perhaps we've just forgotten how to be compassionate.

On a better note, I now have a saint. It's beautiful, I'm speechless. I've only had it for a few hours and it makes me feel better already. Thank you.

Everything is just so...relevent at the moment. Except perhaps mock exams, which are quite irrelevent and annoying. But everything else. The music I find myself listening to, the things I find myself writing, the rose bush, the book I've just started reading, the conversations I've had recently. It all just coincidentally fits together. It all makes sense.

Fabula.

I'm writing again. Not blog-writing, not email-writing, not essay-writing. Valerie-writing. I'd forgotten how important it is to me to just be able to sit down and write for no one. And not necessarily write about my own life. It's not like diary-writing. It's writing for the sake of writing, writing because the world is intricate, writing because my fingers on the keyboard or my pen on the paper sound nice, writing because I can.

I'm not sure what I'll do with all of my written things. Stories are almost more important than diary entries. Stories tell a lot more about me and about my life than records of what I'm doing or thinking, because stories are uncontrollable. You set out to write complete fiction and only halfway through do you realize that you're not sure anymore whether the story is more fiction than reality or more reality than fiction. But at that point, it's too late and you have to finish the story, no matter how uncomfortable or personal it becomes.

Writing, in some way, also reaffirms my existence. Writing is the manifestation of my thoughts, my passions. Being able to write means that I have something to say, and having something to say is important in the general scheme of things.

Quote of the day, taken randomly from the wall next to my pillow:
"We do not have ideologies, we do not have theologies. We dance."-Libertad El Derecho A Atreverse