Ruido

Thanksgiving was full of loud chatter, a long high table, perfect turkey and multiple pies. It was full of the same laughter that enters most conversations here at St. Antony's. And followed by a blue-grass type band that reminded me of home.

I am oddly excited to be on the student government here, perhaps because I already love St. Antony's in this indescribable way, perhaps because it is one of the few places away from Morningside Heights that I have ever felt so at home.

And then there is home, itself. The sound of Thanksgiving at Carol's when I spoke with Kim, my father putting a turkey in the oven, both made me ache for the place that I grew up. I am excited to travel, to see more of Europe, to speak Spanish and explore Portugal. I am excited to face Berlin again. I am most excited, however, to be home.

Noise takes such different forms, from music flooding your ears, sentences of jazz spelled out in tunes. But here, the noise is always welcome, a raw, if raspy, ruido of living.

American Quilts

Glynn and I discussed the merits of American Quilts today. It rained through the sun. I decided to go south--to Spain and Portugal, to drive down the coast with one of my most recent and very best friends.

It's ok when things don't turn out the way you expect them too. That's what living is anyways, rather than predicting or pre-empting or perfection (the fallacy of it all). And it is certainly ok to regret or return, if only in your mind, to recall what was once possible.

It's time for a break...time to be bold.

Every Day

Yesterday, Liana, Sabrina, Thais and I went to Bath. Running to the lodge, wet hair, late as usual, I felt as if I was at home. Over steak and chatter, wandering through the town, photographs with an old Mr. Darcy, the day was warm and sweet. My roommates were sweet as usual, indulging my desires for bath products and coffee. My classmates suddenly boundriless, caught up in pub kisses. There were no disappointments here...only at home. Only in what has been endlessly left behind, in both time and space, not in what was spoken but the loudest of silences. A part of me, a very big part, feels as if in the corner of that room, that world is my own lion waiting to pounce.

And now, with decisions on the tips of my fingers, running through my mind, I feel frozen. Am I just running away again? Or am I starting over? Am I breaking too many promises and expectations to myself and others? Am I breaking my own heart again? And how did it all arrive here, slow steps towards a stubborn in between? Where have I been all of this time?

It's cold here, the frost is running down my lacy windows. A day of baths, French, and a house dinner awaits. And I look forward to these near futures--it is only what follows after, in the weeks to come, that I am afraid of facing.
I think about it every day.

Expectations

There are some things you remain unprepared for, even though you are socialized, grown, cared for in a way to make you ready: ready for the unexpected, for the disappointing, for the draining moments, for the incredible, the insensible, the most beautiful of all.

And yet, you are never really ready. Not for certain, unexpected angles. Not for your own inability to stay put. Not for the hardest beats of your heart.

How I have been running this last year! Running from my own creations, my own promises, my own ideals, my own expectations of myself. And I have run across an ocean, only to end up at the edge of the most familiar, but somehow broken open, bent out of shape.

I feel so much relief here, in spite of the gray skies, in spite of missing the familiar. I quite fancy the softness of the slight storms. I love the long days of reading, writing, biking, breathing freely. I can't help but think about Berlin today--somehow a refuge in my mind (ironic)--of long lawns, rose gardens, grown history, cozy cafes; or napping in the triangular room atop my sister's farmhouse, in the sheets of my childhood home. Of reading novels in my own flowery bed. Of whispering with my niece at night, alight with pre-adolescent gossip and unmatchable love.

For all of the craziness, there are small slices of sunshine: a long-awaited e-mail of forgiveness, of releasing, with the Freudian slip "forgive me" in place of "forget me." And we both forgive each other, but certainly not, not yet ourselves. Forgetting is inconceivable. And we are both still searching for a place that is as simple, as safe, as soft as those years between us.

And now I will confront one of those moments, dreaded, raw, having unfolded all wrong. An end? A new beginning? A sliver of self somewhere in between. Maybe I should have known. Maybe I should have thought back, pieced together those small moments that define individuals and the stories they would like to live. Maybe I wanted to ignore this thread of life unraveling at my feet; maybe I expected far too much of our ocean, I expected it to wash it all away, to cleanse without the sting of salt.

Paper Dreams

It is strange how the unfamiliar bends into normalcy: the expectation to wipe raindrops off of a bicycle seat (what were sleeves for before); heaps of bacon; the constancy of green and grey.

I go through stages here, of complete distraction--perhaps because I am in awe of my satisfaction with this place, this new life of mine; of absorption in my course topic; of fantasizing about a time (before?) (still to come?).

I am glad, though. I am glad that I am used to the rain. That small pubs have become comfortable. That I am sure of certain, stubborn, realities.

So what if these are mostly paper dreams? Most of mine are, anyways, written, raw, revered be me alone.

Parades

Are parades celebration, or simply pebbled streets we stalk? Are they characters, or crimson, lighted alley-ways? Are they dances or daughdry escapes, all done up in drag?

To write about the literal here, what exists, what I cannot exit, would be to write of zig-zagged bike rides before dawn, movie-theaters with assigned seats, peanut oil seeped under skin. It would be to write of dangerous dancing, dribbles of wine, Borat-clad classmates, girls in ties, the crispest of morning lights. It would be to write of North Parade and its constant Christmas strings; the soft-disappointment at missing shortbread; the short braids of tears that are called from the cold. It would be to write of this street, hidden behind a churchwalk, pillaged by passer-bys where windows are awake with another world, un-shattered, showing their rounded, pregant bellies of memorabilia and kind kisses inside of our eyes.

What I like to write out, instead, are the emotions of this world, this walk, the parade (in both a celebratory and geographical sense) that I live each and every day here. It would be to explain the sharp shocks of gray, hands reaching for the small of my back, the weight of curtains, the closest I could be to a fairytale in a novel, foreign, faraway land.

So we are missing witches and warlocks. We are missing princes, of course, and kissable toads. But there is something here, within us, much more magic than I ever witnessed at home. Could the cause be the arches of architecture, the always-changing leaves, mood-rings around our insides, tame at daybreak, adorned in the demise of day?

It is something that reveals itself beneath our gowns, in the bent sunlight on shorn christmas trees, stone houses and open windows where we can surely swing our legs. Broken normalcy. Slippery, buttered-up wings that fly, float in pieces, that fail to bring us back to the hardened earth. It is the wings that save, not the journeys: the places reached above the wanted, wished-for, willed. The moments beyond broken hearts, broken promises. New beginnings, perhaps, but not only new. Far farther above, far more skilled at taking flight .

Because it is ok to run away sometimes, to hide or take deep breaths--breaths that cannot be seen in every winter wind, but speak (if only for a second) what we cannot say in words: they are the crowded clouds we have seeped in, in our fretful flights, in our dreams of falling. Sometimes, they break through our crowns of sky, our tattered teeth, our tied tongues. And they admit to what hurts the most, they give not only witness but life. And these wings, however slight, they are sights to be seen, they are the saddest sighs of relief.

So when I write about parades, about celebrating, about long walks that seem far-away and faintly French, I write about the racket, I write about the speed of my heart. I know. I know that the strength has been given to me to get through, beyond this: to now beckon my own buttery wings.