Another Day Another Dollar ?

Another year has passed. And with that came new friends, new joy, new loss, new heartbreak. Another year older, yes, another year wiser ? Maybe. Less cynicism, probably. More reservations, definitely.

It`s a funny thing to sit down and calculate all the changes one has encountered over a space of given time. It`s like working backwards on a timeline unwinding a series of chain reactions. A feat I find nearly impossible seeing as virtually every time something does change the human reaction is to ask the question “why?” We choose to ignore what brought us to said conclusion despite having made every conscious decision along the way. As soon as an unforeseen or unwanted situation presents itself we release all personal responsibility and leave it to some unknown factor.

Lucky for me I`m not tiring myself with trying to figure out why exactly so much has changed over the year because that would assume that I am not happy with the decisions I`ve made and where the path has brought me. Instead I`m attempting to defy the laws of time to prevent any more change from occurring. I`ve grown accustomed to Paris, fell in love with it`s nuances and reached a level of comfortability I never imagined possible a year and a half ago. But Paris is fleeting, time is slipping out of my hands before I even know it`s there, and the day I am forced to go back to California is taunting me at the finish when time runs out.

And I feel that is how I will be leaving Paris. Out of force. There isn`t an ounce of volition in my mind, body or soul to go back to that country - to go back “home.” The idea of re-integrating into a lifestyle that was once all I knew is now so unfamiliar, so foreign, so exhausting. In essence it`s not change that I`m avoiding but changing back. All that will be left of Paris are stories sometimes told and my memories often visited.

Maybe it`s a question of preparation - not being ready to take steps that, in my mind, are backwards. But that`s the thing with change. Most of the time you don`t get the chance to prepare. No one is ever fully ready to accept change no matter how big or small. So will I ever be ready to back to the states ? Probably not. Will I get used to it ? Most likely. They`ll just have to take me kicking and screaming first.

Déjà Vu

Exactly one week from today I`m heading back to Paris. A year ago I never would have imagined that I would willingly separate myself from the ones that I love the most for another year. It`s a strange feeling recognizing how I felt last year compared to how I feel this year. Last year everything was new, foreign, unknown. This year everything is familiar, routine, my home.

Paris has in fact become my home. I feel more at ease and more myself in Paris than I have ever felt anywhere in my life. I have finally grasped the country, the culture, the language. I have established myself, made my own friends, and fallen in love.

All of these things are a dream come true for the person I was a year ago- heading into an unknown world where nothing could be expected. I remember feeling so lost, so out of place, yet at the same time seeing the person that I was going to become. A person who knew Paris, understood herself, but always wanted more.

And maybe that`s what brings me here again. From the beginning I knew California was not big enough for me. I knew I needed to get out and see what the world had to offer. And now that I`ve seen so much, America suddenly seems so small.

The girl before Paris seems so naïve, so foreign, someone that I no longer know. And maybe I will never know her again, maybe I will never know myself. Maybe I will never find the satisfaction that I am looking for, but Life is not about being satisfactory. Life is not about being complacent. Life is not about knowing exactly who you are and where you are going. That is the beautiful thing about this track we are all on. We are constantly growing. We are vigorously finding our place in this world. And we are never asked to stop.

So that`s it. I will not stop here. I will not stop in America. I will not stop in Paris. I will not stop as long as God continues to give me life on this earth. I will continue to learn, continue to dwell in cultures that are not inherently my own, and continue to cultivate my own person and my own perspective and know that there is a place for me in this world. Even if some areas are proactively trying to push me out, I know that no obstacle is worth giving up hope. Because I am proactively shaping my life, and I can only hope that Fate and Destiny are on my side.

Breathless

There are two things in this world I love doing more than anything else : reading and writing. There isn`t a book in this world that someone would have to force me to read. I will read anything eagerly and willingly, genre or theme irrelevant. And any piece of work my eyes start skimming ignites a spark within me and my body is immediately overcome with an urge to write about it. And if I don`t write specifically about the thing that I`m reading, I express my thoughts and feelings and inspirations that the reading provoked within me. Regardless of what each book makes me want to write, as I turn each page I find myself inching closer to a notepad and pencil or my laptop if it`s near.

Only moments ago (or maybe an hour at most) I sat down on my parents’ couch and stared reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. The book has been turned into a film starring Julia Roberts and me being me, if a movie that I want to see was first a book I have to read the book before I see the film. So staying true to form, I opened this book which documents the author’s personal pilgrimage to self-fulfillment and I was immediately sucked in.

There are many obvious reasons why I would be drawn to this book : I am a world traveler, the author is a world traveller, I am a young aspiring writer, she is a young writer, she left the country with the intention of finding herself and inner-happiness, I left the country with no specific intentions and found in me exactly what she was looking for. The writer in me tears apart her sentences, re-reading the ones I personally dislike, re-reading the ones I find beautiful, and forcing words I never think to use into my brain so I`ll refer back to them in my future writings. Like the word breathless for example. It is such a beautiful world; used in it`s literal meaning and used more metaphorically it brings life to what would have been just another sentence lost in a page of countless words. I would never think to use the word breathless out of its immediate translation and I am almost envious of this already-successful-writer that she thought to use it, and that she used it well.

I am still at the very beginning of the novel, the author has just barely gotten to Rome, Italy. Which ironically was the last city I visited before returning home from Paris so it is still the freshest in my mind. The way she describes isolated situations and finds personal meaning in every fountain she goes to triggered a rather ambitious idea within me. I regret not keeping travel journals throughout the 10 countries I visited in Europe and not recreating my experiences on paper immediately after I returned home. But I forgive myself since I have one more year abroad and can document what I see through my eyes in hopes that I create something worth reading.

The idea that came over me while reading her book was that I want to become more independent. I want to isolate myself in an unfamiliar world. I want to travel alone is basically what I`m getting at. In all my travels over the past year I only kind of traveled alone twice (Brussels and Dublin). And both times I wondered to myself how people did this for months at a time since I was struggling with mere hours of solitude (I was only ever alone for a day or two at most). But I find that the times when I am alone with myself are the times my mind becomes most intimate. I indulge in the nuances of life that appeal to me at each moment and I even embrace life`s most hidden secrets that I myself try to keep out of the forefront of my mind. I pity the people who can`t stand to be alone, who are so dependent on the presence and opinions of others that they fail to ever know themselves completely. I want to be the opposite of these people. I want to make myself so vulnerable to what the world has to offer that I in essence become more than just a constituent of the world. I don`t want to live idly as a glimmer of existence in this universe. I want to show myself to the world all the while letting the world in. I don`t know where I want to start, how I am going to do this, or even why at this point. But every journey has a beginning, and I can already start to see the footprints I`m leaving behind . . .

Half the World Away

All of my days are now split into two distinct parts : the hours that I can maybe, hopefully, potentially, possibly talk to him, and the hours that I can`t. During each part time trickles at an incalculable rate, so much so that it becomes virtually impossible to distinguish the standard 24-hour day at all. I`m constantly living in two different time zones ; in two different worlds where one ceases to acknowledge the other. In one my life is tangible, concrete, now. The other is abstract, founded on hope and an incessant longing for something uncontrollable. Both days revolve around luck, chance, fate even, for those who are hopeless romantics. I`ve developed a sort of dependency on all the cables and wires and little invisible connections that magically link us to one another. There is no checking in, there are no calls just to say “hi,” there are no good night kisses or notes to wake up to on the breakfast table. I am the walking, living, breathing example of distance. Distance in time, distance in space, distance in a world that is growing smaller by the second. Some days are too short, some days are too long, my todays are his yesterdays, my future is his present. The world has pulled us apart, separated us by an unchanging invincible distance, only to leave us with a closeness in our hearts that always pulls us back together, no matter how far in time or space we have travelled.

Look At This Mess

Lately I`ve been having this recurring dream. And in this dream I`ve returned prematurely to the United States and can never figure out why I`m there. I feel out of place, disappointed as if I`d failed myself by not even being able to have one independent year abroad. And every time I`m doing everything possible to get back to France. I avoid seeing anyone I know because I don`t want them to know that I failed - that I couldn`t do it. It`s always a pride thing. It always feels as though the mystery is finally resolved for everyone but has just started for me.

Confusion and isolation envelop my brain`s capacity to properly function. Nothing makes sense. No one looks familiar. I can`t remember who I am or what I`m doing or how I got there. There`s always a physical constraint preventing me from making any significant progression. I`m trapped there idling in space not being able to put any of the pieces together. And that`s what my mystery consists of. This feeling of displacement without any explanation.

Your mystery is much more closely related to my actual life. No matter how many stories I tell or photos I take or thoughts I occasionally blog, there are always pieces missing from the puzzle. The way you assemble the pieces may or may not pertain to the reality of my life at all. And my physical absence (or your physical absence, depending how you look at it) is the reason for it. And there is no way around it unless there`s a way around the physical distance of objects and phenomena throughout the prevailing universe without being restricted by that little thing called time. In my head as soon as I`m back to the familiarity of the United States all of that disappears. I bring back all of the pieces from my puzzle and fit perfectly into the puzzle I left behind.

When I was little I was notorious for stealing one piece from every puzzle and hiding it so I would always be the one to "solve" the puzzle - to fill that last outstanding hole. And maybe I`m doing that again now, or maybe my future self already did it via a wrinkle in time. Maybe I hid a tiny little piece of me in this mess of a universe but don`t know where I hid it yet. And there`s no way of finding out without encountering some wrong pieces first. But with a little patience, and a little perseverance, all of the pieces are bound to fall together in time.

Little Lady K.D.

K.D. is in a better place. She is now in doggie Heaven running around with Sheena and all of her other favorite friends. I`m looking at a picture of her and I now, and all I can do is smile.

I remember when Sheena died; I remember exactly where I was, exactly what I had been doing, exactly what I had felt. I had just finished a soccer game and she had died earlier that day. My dad waited until after the match to tell me because he didn`t want to interfere with how I played. I remember resenting him for that. I remember wishing I had known immediately so I could have in some way escorted her to Heaven. I remember thinking that Sheena would be cross with me for not having said goodbye as soon as absolutely possible. And I cried; I cried for weeks.

And now K.D. has taken the same path. She`s crossed on from her energetic, epileptic, owner-attached life onto a new place - a new world that we know nothing about. K.D. was my companion, my "girl" for lack of a better phrase. I confided in her when I had no where else to go, I cried into her furry shoulder when Rachel passed away, I leapt into her arms every time I came home from university. We shared the same pillow throughout all my years of middle and high school. Many of those nights I spent coverless crumpled up into a ball because I wouldn`t dare wake her for hogging my twin sized bed. I stayed by her side through her epileptic fits. I was there when she gave birth to her seven squirming babies. She was there for my never-ending soccer tournaments, my high school proms, my first loves, and all my losses. She never hesitated to help me clear my plate when I had eaten enough. She waited fervently at the edge of the pool for me to throw her Kong into the water. And she graciously accepted the role of mother to every and any child that instantly grew attached to and fell in love with her.

It seems silly now that I used to scream and cry every time K.D. was let off her leash. I was so scared that she would run away forever and I would never see her again. I physically attached myself to her because the thought of losing her was so real and so frightful that I wouldn`t even allow for the possibility. There were days in middle school when K.D. would escape from the backyard and come wandering onto campus. I would get called into the office and be asked to escort my dog home. I remember always feeling so lucky. I was so enthused to have such a loyal companion that she would come looking for me at school. And every time I brought her home, I would reprimand my father for letting her escape. I told him that HE was lucky that she didn`t run off to some other family and he should not have taken her presence for granted.

But now she is gone forever. At least from this world. And yet, I still can`t bring myself to cry about it. And I don`t want to cry. She gave meaning to my life when nothing else could. I look back and all I have are memories of unconditional love and affection. She nurtured me to health when I was sick, was joyous of my accomplishments, and shared in my sorrows. I only hope I was able to give to her as much as she gave to me. Dog might be man`s best friend, but K.D. was my soul. And I know that she is up there, somewhere, waiting to greet me, some day.

I love you K.D. <3

Food for Thought

Today I found myself sitting outside the Denfert-Rochereau RER station waiting for my friend Thomas. As I sat there on the bench absorbing my rare yet needed dosage of vitamin D, a man approached me and asked if I had a cigarette. I politely declined, and as I watched him walk away I noticed that I did not make eye contact with him. It was almost as if I couldn`t even be bothered to look up at the person posing the question. It then dawned on me that in Paris I never look people directly in the eye (apart from the semi-frequent eye-tag game played in the metro or where-have-you). I tried to remember if I`ve always been like that - if I`ve always been one so reserved to avoid brief moments of prolonged eye contact. The thought itself is laughable yet it still struck an uneasy chord.

I knew that living abroad for a year would incur inevitable changes in my person but it never occurred to me how permanent some of those changes might be. After nearly 20 years of forming habits and developing little daily rituals it would seem as though I have myself pretty figured out. But if in 6 months I`m already transforming into an antisocial hermit what irreversible damage will an entire year do ? It`s interesting to see how such a significant life style change is dividing my life quite literally into "now" and "then." There`s "before Paris," and there`s "Paris." Paris I feel will always be the transitive marker in my life where I gave up some of my youthful thinking and meandered my way into becoming a real life adult. As spontaneous as an action that should be, a part of me feels as though I`m choosing to change and I`m choosing to grow up. Though slight personality changes can be overlooked and even enhance a person, growing up is the one thing that cannot be undone. I will never be that anxious over-excited eager-to-see-the-world girl I once was before coming to Paris. I will never again be the crazy exuberant sorority girl out-dressing everyone at every event. And I will definitely never again be the outspoken pink haired punk-rock cheerleader I was in high school. So my question is, what comes after Paris ? Is it even possible to walk back into the life of a person who no longer exists ? Moreover, does that life continue even after said person has gone ?

The time is quickly approaching where I have to decide how to spend my next couple of years. Thought provoking situations such as this lead to exasperating thoughts leaving me a bit pensive at best. I feel the past and the present pulling at me from both ends. It`s only a matter of figuring out which of them will bring me to the future.