Indian Summer

The summer is winding down. The last days of summer are always my favorite, those heavy, hot days in August when everyone tries to squeeze the last ounce of perfect out of the summer. "Indian summer". All the things you meant to do all summer but never did are all crammed into August. Everyone goes out for ice cream, they spend their days running around in the parks, they spend their nights at rooftop bars with trendy cocktails enjoying the breeze as the sun sets.

In many ways, I feel like I could do this all the time. But it wouldn't be as sweet if it was permanent, would it?

I worked my last night at the restaurant on Saturday. It's funny, it is the job I loved to hate. But I really did love to hate it. It was addictive. And I cared about it, as stupid as it was. But leaving work really drove home the point that the summer was over. It brought me to tears, honestly. Everything about my life this summer has radiated from that restaurant. I have met some of the most entertaining people, some that I only spent a brief conversation on and some that I have come to care about in ways I did not expect. I grew up in a way I never had to at college, I got my first taste of what the "real" world is like from that restaurant. I learned about wine and learned to mix cocktails. I learned to appreciate things that I knew nothing about before. And now it's over.

On Sunday, I went to a new church. It was enormous, what we call a "megachurch". It is hard for any non-American to imagine such a thing, thousands of people all worshipping in a building with no alter, no crosses, no stained glass windows, no choir, not even a specific denomination. Instead, it had stadium seating and electric guitars. The church even had a Starbucks Cafe inside of it. To be honest, the whole thing kind of blew my mind as well. But it was nice to be at a church, it is something that I had not realized I missed so much until I went back to it. I'm quite looking forward to the cathedrals of Paris.

I've bought the Julieta Venegas CD (I know, at this point, it's already kind of old and I'm kind of out of it). But I love it. I mean, seriously? I always wrote off "Eres Para Mi" as pathetic Mexican pop sung by some Thalia-wannabe but now I can't stop singing it. And every other song on the CD. She's just so...happy.

I have been so happy lately with things that are so small. I love getting peach Italian cream sodas from a small cafe at the edge of a city park and just spending hours walking and reading and writing and enjoying. I love singing in the middle of the road in Buford when the entire town has already gone to sleep and chasing the train along the tracks each time it passes. I love spending the afternoon in bookstores, buying whatever I feel like or not buying anything at all. I love slow dancing at 3:00 am to songs from the jukebox at trashy 24-hour restaurants. I love all of it.

I only have a few more days of reddish-orange sunsets and cotton dresses and gelato and impromptu lullabies but I am betting that Parisians also know a thing or two about the wonders of Indian summer.

It is late and the weekend has already passed me by before I even had a chance to notice. I feel like I have wasted a lot of time lately, spun my wheels, avoided doing things and making plans and generally procrastinated life in general.

I'll be leaving for Paris in two weeks and for some reason, I am scared. In some ways, more scared than I was about leaving for college. Yes, college prepares you well for what it feels like to have to leave somewhere. But it does not necessarily prepare you well for going somewhere. I am used to saying goodbyes, used to being uprooted. But the college takes care of you upon arrival. Your social life, your academic life, your residential life...all of it is predetermined by some extent by other people or simply by the fact that you find yourself living in an extremely isolated and secure corner of Norway with 200 other people. Life doesn't happen like that in other places.

So it is not really leaving that I am scared of. It is what happens after I leave. I know I will miss people, but I do not fear it. I know I will miss my home and my country but again, I do not fear it. What I do not know, however, is what I will do and who I will be doing it with once I leave. There is no safety net to fall back on if I find myself lonely or bored in Paris. I can't call maintenance to replace a light bulb in my room, I can't go to the kantina to eat a meal if I'm hungry, I can't go to Snikkarbua to meet up with people. I am moving to a city full of strangers who quite frankly don't give a damn whether I starve to death miserably or not. And that is what I am afraid of, that unknown, that lack of someone to jump in and save me should I need it.

I have been looking forward to my soon-to-be independence in Paris for so long. When did it change from being something to be excited about to being something to be frightened about?

Here and Now

It has been said that love is the glorification of the present. Love cares not for the past and throws caution to the wind when it comes to thoughts of the future. Love, in it's purest form, is about the here and now. It is about the present smile, the present warmth, the present wine, the present conversation, the present gaze. It happens only when you finally cease to think beyond the moment. Anything outside of your exact focus becomes meaningless, everything else falls away. It is impossible to think of future moments, or past moments, because you must indulge yourself so fully in the present, become engulfed by the temporal nature of it all. Love happens at that exact moment when you can feel the entire world turn to look at you, when you can feel the whole world watch you and smile, nodding in approval. Love happens in that spotlight. It is not quiet, it is not reasonable. It is decadent and reckless. And it happens because you realize your own finite being, you feel the pressure of time. It happens when you unconditionally live in the present. It happens when you are lucky enough to let yourself allow it to happen. It happens to you and because of you and for you. It is dangerous. And it is wonderful.

My New-Found Loves

1. Quills and ink
2. www.statravel.com
3. Shiraz, Malbec, and Rioja wines
4. Private beaches at the lake
5. Days spent in bed
6. Teas flavored like flowers
7. Golf courses at night
8. 5:00 am Waffle House trips
9. Postcards
10. Ghost towns
11. Guinness beer
12. Milan Kundera
13. Heirlooms
14. My mother's art
15. The Olympics
16. Peach Italian cream sodas
17. My new hair color
18. Life.

La Dolce Vita

At times, it is hard to remember that these are the moments that I live for because at times, these moments can feel too few and far between.

Right here, right now...this is exactly what it means to be young. These are the days I'll long for.

I am not sure if I am ready to give up the late nights and the serenades and the cocktails and the friends and the country and the stability and the sheer contentment just yet. I have not had so much to smile about in a long time. It begs the question, is this all happening because I am leaving or is this all happening in spite of the fact that I'm leaving?

But right now, I won't ask questions. Life is far too sweet to be soured by doubt and regrets.

The Beauty in the Breakdown

Tonight I found myself laying in the parking lot of a 24-hour breakfast place at 1:00 AM, looking at the stars with one of the few people I have ever selflessly cared about. I dropped everything--work, sleep, sanity-- for a late night angst-fest with someone who needed it more than ever. So we stuffed ourselves on greasy waffles and bad coffee with nowhere to go afterwards but the parking lot. So we laid there and stared and talked and stared some more. We were perhaps, for that moment, the most cynical people in the world. We watched each other break down, we marveled at how all things fall apart, we felt the pieces of the sky fall down around us. And then we laughed at our own hopelessness, if only because there is not much else to do at such a time.

I have spent a lot of time wondering what life would have been like had I never gone to Norway. I would not have become the person that I am, I would not have had to do some of the things I've done, life might not have hurt so much, I might have been happier with all of my naivety. But tonight I realized that the whole thought process is useless. I am the person I am now for a reason. I had to leave for a reason. And even if the only reason was so that one of the most important relationships of my life could turn into one of the most important friendships of my life, even if the only reason was so that I could find myself laying down in that parking lot tonight... then it was all worth it.

Black

The inner self. It is strange to think that maybe one is an entirely different person inside than they are outside. It is not necessarily because one is fake or because one tries to be something that they are not, it is just that the selective view of the self that others see is not the full picture of the true self, the self that only the individual can know.

It is interesting to realize that the outer self that is perceived by others is so far from the truth. Many of us pretend to be happy, many of us pretend like we occupy our time thinking about saving the world or the latest gossip or the paper that we have to write for our next class or whatever other socially acceptable topic you can think of. We all pretend like that is what our self is, that those things are all that occupy our time and thought. And it is funny because in reality, those things likely occupy about 10% of our true thought and the other 90% of our thoughts are about things that hardly any other person will ever know about.

It is like we all walk around pretending to be these well-adjusted people, entirely in control of our emotions. We act as though nothing affects us, as though we have gotten over past events or actions in a reasonable way and as though the future does not cause us any anxiety. Even when we do discuss our problems, we do so according to social etiquette. We carefully choose the right things to complain about or cry about but make sure we only scratch the surface of what is real.

We are all so afraid of being vulnerable, of being touched, of caring, of being judged, that we hide so much away. Perhaps we are even so afraid of ourselves that rather than articulate our own inner darkness, our own shadows and nuances, we simply push these things away from language, away from physical embodiment. As a defense mechanism, we only confront our demons in abstract and opaque ways, never defining them or bringing them to light.

These truths, these more full pictures of ourselves, are hidden so deeply inside of us that they are often even hidden from ourselves. But every once in awhile, something will remind us of them. Something will force us to wrestle with them once again. And the ironic thing is that rather than truly face them, rather than voice our emotions and fears and frighteningly complicated inner dialectics, we wrestle our personal truths back underneath the surface. We push them so far in hopes that we will never have to see them again.

So we sit in silence. We smile. We pretend. We become so good at pretending that we fool ourselves into thinking that we are truly happy, that all of the pieces of our self are good, that we have moved on from the past and that the future looks bright. We fool ourselves. But it becomes exceedingly difficult to do so and eventually we learn that no one can pretend forever.

Eventually, we remember. Always.