I, of course, made my farewell post too soon. I, of course, have 20minutes before the crappy New Years shows come on - do we pick Carson, Seacrest, or Dick? - and 20minutes before Apples to Apples with the family. An hour and 20minutes before I can hit the champagne. But here's something I did in 2005: I am now crazy. I just realized this: Have I finally loved right, the way it's supposed to be done?

Alternated today between ecstatic and grumpy. Alternated today between yelling at my kittens and speaking coochiecoo to them. Alternated today about National-Rail-Woes and Day-Travelcard-Highs. Alternated today between nasty stomachs and happy steamed carrot consumption by fingers. Laid out all my clothing and imagined what I'd wear to the theater, what I'd wear on walks in the park, what I'd wear to rock shows at Lock17. Found out I had plenty of funds to fund fun.

I started a book yesterday. 'The Autograph Man' by Zadie Smith. Got through only 20 pages. Maybe I will spend all night and all day reading it. My brother and I will start the New Year with a Midnight Game of Magic, so that the first thing I do next year is be a nerd with my brother. Tasty.

i don't need a crowded ballroom / everything i want is here / if you're with me / next year will be / the perfect year - sunsetblvd

pondicherry

(I'm just all together mindfucked by technology. For example: pc headsets + msn messenger. Insanity - drawing, screenshakes, little animations popping up all over. I feel like a grandma. This is too much.)

My New Years Eve will consist of champagne shared amongst me and my parents with a bit o' sparkling apple cider on the side and perhaps some ApplesToApples to go along with Dick Clark ringing us in and Ricky Ullman and his friends on the Disney Channel half-assedly singing us in. (Seriously, what are my chances of marrying Ricky Ullman?)

I've always liked to make lists and write on the eve of the new year, and by that I mean I've always liked to think about making lists and writing. But in the past there were always major aspects of my life that I thought needed change, major aspects of me that needed change. For the first time in my life I am incredibly, unbelievingly, content. I am living, I am loving, I am learning.

"I love. I have loved. I will love." Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

And the only thing I wish is the thing I have been wishing for a while. I was reminded of it by 'The Princess Diaries' tonight (I watched it on the Disney Channel like I watched 'The Lizzie McGuire Movie' last night and various other Disney Channel Original Movies on many other nights when I am at home.) There was a quote, "The brave may not live forever but the cautious do not live at all."

So there's crossed fingers for bravery. That's what I feel the final ingredient will be in my oh-so lucky life. Much love. See you on the other side of the pond. And by pond I mean Atlantic Ocean.

http://kristinacalling.blogspot.com

yesterday: worried sick about visas, eurail passes, and what to do after june16.
today: 2hours in borders with piles of london books next to me while a symphonic version of 'phantom of the opera' plays: excited beyond words to do more exploring and show visitors my favorite finds and to find a part-time job in london: indulging in tulle skirts and moleskin journals.

"for a fleeting moment, as anyone can, i imagined i felt the poverty of my future, all its unholdable surfaces, i felt inexplicably ungrateful and sad... i longed for a feeling again, a particular one: the one of approaching a room but of not yet having entered it... anticipation playing in the heart like an orchestra tuning and warming, the notes unwed and fabulous and crazed - i wanted it back! - those beginning sounds, so much more interesting than the piece itself..."
-lorrie moore

remember.

(( we were cowboys and that was all there was. we were cowboys and the land was ours, outside, it was ours. we were cowboys and everything outside was precious to us, every grass irreplaceable and every tree an entity of its own. we went down into the darker grass where there were sticks on the ground and the trees were moving. i saw trees reaching and yearning and i felt that pull on my heart and the trees, they were recreating every moment of human history. it was dark down by those trees and we searched in the tall grass for sticks that weren't hollow and that would catch on fire. together we gathered these sticks and we brought them up to the fire ring and that was our goal. we were cowboys and we had only one task in mind and that was to make that fire. we went to the horses, i don't know why we went to the horses, probably just because cowboys go to horses, and i held their cheeks as i fed them hay. their cheeks moved, all three horses in very different ways, and it was this horrible, ethereal still when they stopped chewing. they would stop chewing and it would be a deafening silence, their eyes looking at something beyond what any of us could comprehend. so we were cowboys with our horses, and we were cowboys congregating around something sacred. there were others, but they were inside, they were battling, they were squirming in heat and intensity, and they were the others, and we wanted no part. instead we trekked on the grass that made patterns in the wind - we scoured the land, we stood silent as the coyotes were yelling - they were yipping, squealing, crying - what were they doing - did they find something that we were looking for? this is the thing - and this is the very essence of it - we were cowboys and we were in another time and place and we had a mission - a mission that was the simplest and most beautiful and yet most deadly thing in the world - we were searching for control, for the ultimate symbol of dangerous and beautiful power - we were lookin' to fix a bonfire. ))


{ and here's the other part. the other part is that i was needed. and i took up that spot and here it is, wait for it, because i didn't know it was coming - it was this deep dark still of warmth and sanctity, and between two people, a hot bright spot of privacy and separateness. huddle formation, take it, and i took it, and skinskinskinskin and it slipped out - it flew - i would mouth it - but it was right because it flew right out and i know it was fine. because you know why? that white dove flew back to me. it flew back to me and nestled deep within my skin, just like i wanted to be in your skin. cinderella flying up the stairs, and there are soft nestled warm layers - red, orange, yellow, quite literally - and a castle that looked like puzzle pieces in the opposite color palette - cerulean, indigo, violet - stamped out of antiquity and stained glass. and you and me. and you and you. nestled like peaches in a fruit bowl. }

So this semester was worth a damn, a big damn, but my room is suddenly strangely bare, bare like the first night I spent here, sad and scared and worried on a mattress. And again, I will be sad and scared and worried on a mattress. I know I can live in London. I know I can last, because I've wanted to be in London forever. But this is terrifying! I am terrified! Number one - plugs! Plug adapters. Number two - what if I am not as brave as I want to be?

Perhaps I should watch 'The Brave Little Toaster' for inspiration.

Well, nothing I say here is going to change a thing. My life has been on the way up for the past year and a half. And I'm nostalgic for only yesterday.

give judy my notice.

my insides are eating themselves. i can't eat because whatever i do eat i get this stomachache. i get mopey and then i get grumpy because i'm starving and then i eat and get sad because my stomach soon implodes upon itself.

i've been writing about catch22's lately.

what really grinds my gears:

1) stomach aches and 2) that bitch at the walker who was wearing my boots.

the end.

lost at sea.

"He turned to her one night in bed and said, 'Millie, you're fifty-one. You don't have to have a career. Really, you don't,' and she put her hands to her face and wept."

"But then you had to leave. And in your packing and going, in tearing the seams, the hems, the haws, you felt like some ba dcombination of Odysseus and Penelope. You felt funny in the heart."

"There were people in the world who were good at love and people who were bad at it. She was bad. She used to think she was good at love, that it was intimacy she was bad at. But you had to have both. Love without intimacy, she knew, was an unsung tune. It was all in your head. You said, 'Listen to this!' but what you found yourself singing was a tangle, a nothing, a heap. It reminded her of a dinner party she had gone to once, where dessert was served on plates printed with French songs. After dinner everyone had had to sing their plate, but hers had stil had whipped cream on it, and when it came her turn, she had garbled the notes and words, frantically pushing the whipped cream around with a fork so she could see the next measure. Oh, she was bad, bad like that, at love."

"Dennis' ex-wife had fallen in love with a man she said was like out of a book. Dennis forgot to ask what book. He was depressed and barely dating. 'I should have said to her, 'Yeah, and what book?'"

"People talking were meant to look at a face, the disastrous cupcake of it, the hide-and-seek of the heart dashing across. With a phone, you said words, but you never watched them go in. You saw them off at the airport but never knew whether there was anyone there to greet them when they got off the plane."

"What all to love in the world, went a prayer from her childhood. What all to love?
The lumber of his bones piled close."

"Could you live in the dead excellence of a thing-the stupid mortar of a body, the stubborn husk love had crawled from? Yes, he thought."

These are some quotes I will not have the time or patience to write in my quote book before I have to return it to the library at school. They are all by Lorrie Moore, who breaks my heart but not as much, as I learned tonight, as three short lines by Richard Brautigan.

it features you.

item worthy of notice: in exactly four weeks, my plane will be landing in london. and i will not be back in the united states until june.

the world is passing me by, and while i try to make everyday different and count, it's hard to know exactly how to do that when it's in your face.