I always wonder if it is better to have window shades, to shatter the sunlight, sweep back the mornings so that dawn dives into midday. I am still unsure whether slumber is a sweet escape or merely the place where pushed-back memories mark the present, stencil themselves sharply back into your life. Shadows of reality, rendered by the shades, by the shallow mornings, by the shaken.
I am looking for summer jobs somewhere beautiful. Of course, there are many options in Europe and, stereotypically, I am drawn to Tuscany and the Croatian Coast. Of course, I know that neither will actually involve money-making opportunities. But I also know that there, I could write.
I looked back last week, in a short attempt to organize my room, at what I had written as a child and an adolescent. I wrote about lives I did not know and yet embedded myself in all of these small characters. I wrote about what scared me the most. I wrote about what happened in the last few years. And while some of the writing made me laugh so hard I thought I would cry, I was fearless, at least, in my mentionings. I was fearless in what I read aloud to my middle school classmates. I was fearless in opening myself.
The farm in serene in winter, with pouncing animals, wood heat and a washing of white. My sister's belly is bold and strong, a baby foot often kicking to the side.
I need to attempt to read. Maybe books will bring me back, or blackout some of the memories that make my bed, however warm, awash in a time of the past. This feathery limbo is all that I left behind.
New York in the winter is different from Morningside Heights, which is oddly empty and cold from persistent rain. The lack of Columbia students, empty brunches, stores of memorabilia and mocking memories gives a familiar taste to it all.
