italiansunset

Here I sit at work, thinking things like, "I wonder what would happen if I dropped a Triscuit into my orange juice."

And I found this: My sister wrote this before I left for college, when she was still in high school.

College is a journey- a far off land of sunshine and adventure and adults and lofty blue sky. It is wreathed in clouds and tall buildings, long paved roads and oceans of beautiful young people. It’s the place that I can never reach- it is untouchable and enchanted like a dream. When the people around you reach a certain age, they too, become beautiful and ascend to that far-off “college,” as if through a cloud… a cloud that you cannot pass through. Sisters, brothers, friends- they all get that dreamy misty look in their eyes, and you know then that they are gone. College has captured the heart and mind of yet another person. A person that you have grown with and lived with and shared every soft moment and painful second of your young life with, and whom you love and cannot bear to be stolen away.
The whole house is suddenly a swarm of energy and activity and friends dropping by, as she packs up all of the things that she loves and cannot bear to leave behind, and then you are forgotten. The night before, you stand in her dark room and watch her sleep and gaze longingly at the luggage and boxes on the floor, and you envy them, because you cannot share with her those long exciting years of her life, and there is no room for you in those boxes, in that luggage. You want to take something precious from that pile of belongings, something that can anchor her here and that you can look at and be sure that she will come back for it- and maybe that thing is you, but you can never really be so confident. And in the morning, when it is still early and the sky is pearly and gray, the house is roused again, and then all the memories and belongings and her drift through your fingers like water. Then there are tears at the door, because she will miss you, but your tears come from your soul, because you are being broken in two… and you wonder why college is stealing your sister away.
And so she soars off towards her golden futures and her adventures, and leaves behind forever the past and childhood and walls and…you.
And you still wake up in the mornings, eager to see her sleepy face, and come home at night, comforted by the thought of her open ears and her warm heart. But all there is left is an empty shell of her room, and a dark place in your heart, for now she is already oceans away.

And then I started to cry because I missed how close we were.
I watched the video she made about our old house and stared at the last scene, which was just a photo of the bathroom floor between our rooms, where we used to talk for hours.

This weekend was one of the best weekends I've had in a long time. The things we did weren't even particularly exciting or significant; they were just things regular college kids do on regular college days. At one point, about six of my roomies and I sat around the dinner table, talking about nothing in particular. We were just laughing and joking, and the television was on. Just friends, all smiles, eating ice cream with whipped cream and joking about the most ridiculous things. And I remember sitting there just enjoying my friends, when all of a sudden, it hit me. This was another one of those moments. Those moments where you've got the people you love around you, and you're perfectly happy exactly where you are. It hit me that I was in college, and that I had so many amazing friends around me, living with me in the same house...and it hit me that this would not last forever.

I became conscious of the fact that I would one day be older - maybe 40, settled in my home, and that I would think back on these days and long for them with the most bittersweet of feelings. That I would perhaps long for those moments so much that it might even be slightly painful. To have all these smiling faces around - to have all these wonderful people to idle the days away with. To have these beautiful faces laugh with me about nothing really - people with whom to enjoy every random, ridiculous college moment; and also every lazy, boring college moment. I felt so comfortable and happy with these people around me, and I began to think about what life would be like without them walking around our house all day...making confetti birthday cake just for the heck of it, cooking dinner, watching TV, coming back from grocery trips. I began to think about what it might be like if I didn't have the option of just walking into a friend's room and asking them if they wanted to go downtown for some food and maybe a movie. To the beach. Or maybe just some coffee at North Star.

Yesterday, two of my friends and I randomly decided to go to Denny's at 3AM. It was one of the best decisions we have ever made. Dressed like hobos in our weirdest of outfits (it was late and we didn't care), we drove our not-yet-tired butts out to the local Denny's and ordered enough food to feed a third world country. Okay, well, maybe just 3 hungry college students. It was exhilarating to be out so randomly, and our conversation (due to our delirium) was incredibly amusing. We just had the best time laughing, joking, and sharing stories. The greasy Denny's food tasted better than the finest of French cuisine at that point. I felt so happy; so at ease, and so grateful that I had friends who were willing to go to Denny's with me at 3 in the morning. We got back at 4AM, talked and laughed for a bit more, and then went to bed. It's moments like these that I think I'll miss when college is through. It's a friend walking randomly into your room just to tell you something funny, and it's deciding at the spur of the moment to have dinner out instead of trying to cook something at home. It's going shopping in the middle of the week because you both need retail therapy and don't care that there are books to read and classes to study for. It's running into your best friend's room crying and then being reminded of exactly why you love her so much.

I don't want college to end. But it will end, inevitably, and there is no stopping it - no slowing it down. All you can do is hold onto each moment - drown and lose yourself in the pleasure of the company of those who have been right there with you from the start - those for whom your love might not always be said, but never need speaking.

I am now going to take that much awaited shower. It's going to be amazing!! Amazzzing. With three z's, because right after the shower, I'm going to bed.

Recent news:

1. I can't wait to go to New York over the summer with Leslie! It's going to be so great. I haven't been on a plane in so long...I miss the gross airplane food and the scratchy pillow. Not that those things were great, they just tell me that I'm on my way to travel the world! Or the U.S. in this case.

2. I have been listening to "Maybe it's Meant to Be" by Late Night Alumni on repeat all day. Well, almost. I've only just received the song from Steph, but I've already played it 8 times today. I'm pretty sure Julie wants to stab me in the back of the neck with a fork. Okay, gross image. Nevermind.

The shower beckons...goodnight!

I ate 7 slices of bread today. In addition to some other things, but SEVEN SLICES OF BREAD! IN ONE DAY! Mr. Atkins would probably tell me that I'm going to hell. I feel a little disturbed by the fact that I've had so much. If you stacked 7 slices of bread on top of one other, they would basically form one nice, solid cube of bread. In other words, I have eaten a cube of bread approximately the size of my head. I know I'm not on my way to fats-ville, but I swear, tomorrow I'm having no bread. None at all. I have no idea when I turned into this bread chugging machine.

I just went to the gym, and holy crap, it was the best thing ever. I feel amazing. I'm definitely going to have a gym membership in the future. In other news, I have to get up at 7AM tomorrow. That's not going to be fun. Screw reading - I'm going to bed in 2 hours. And in my humble opinion, the next two hours will be better spent eating and watching a movie than studying.

I can't believe so few people seem to be affected. I can't believe that you could hear about something like that and just brush it off like it's just another news story. I can't believe that you wouldn't feel for them and cry for them and hurt for them. It's not just because Lenni goes to VA Tech that I freaked out when I heard the news. We are so desensitized to things like this. We are so desensitized to death. These are real people, breathing people, with dreams and girlfriends and boyfriends and mothers and fathers and siblings and friends and lives. People are not statistics, and this is not just another tragic event that will be on the news for a while and eventually disappear. These people are not coming back.

When you meet someone whom you consider to be the absolute pinnacle of perfection, is it imperative that you fight with all that is in you to have them? Would it be considered almost blasphemous to give up on something you feel you could only dream of having?

It is a rare occurrence in life when you meet someone who falls perfectly through every filter you have devised for use on people to whom you are attracted. Most of the time, people get caught up in the very first of the filters, without even a chance of making it to the bottom. If types of coffee could be used as a metaphors for individuals, I would hope that after passing through the filters, only the finest of blends would reach the cup. Some people get caught up at the (let's just admit it) first filter, the ugly filter, while others fail to pass at another one of the first filters, the smelly filter. A few others pass through more, getting caught at the "intellect and depth" filter, and so on. Even less people make it through the majority of the filters - instead getting caught at the "chemistry" filter. And that one...that filter is the most elusive of all. Because even if the person passes through all 10+ filters, by some act of God, the chemistry may not be there, and no attraction would be present.

According to some obscure book I once read ages ago, your "imago" is your idealized vision of a person: your flawless, perfect, idealized other - unfettered by the restrictions of reality. It is perplexing (and frustrating) to know that someone you meet who fits perfectly into that image of your "imago" can have absolutely no hold on your heart. This phenomena also works in reverse; a person who by no means could ever, ever be up to par with your high standards for an ideal significant other can have the strongest, most powerful effects over your emotions.

But what happens when the two come together? What happens when you meet someone who not only falls through every filter (a rare occurrence in and of itself), but who also inspires those warm feelings of safety, comfort and delight in you? For me, an event like this is as likely as two lone grains of sand colliding in space. It seems it would be practically SINFUL to sit back and do nothing. Does something like this demand a response? Would it be the most horrible, stupid, practically sacrilegious thing to do if you did not fight, with everything you had, for someone who fit?

I just finished watching the movie, Les Poupées Russes, and it was absolutely amazing. I loved the first movie L'auberge Espagnole, and I wasn't sure if the director could make another success, but my goodness... :)

Some of my favorite quotes from the movie:

Wendy: I know most girls they get weak on their knees for what's beautiful, you know, that's all they see, that's all they want. But I'm not like that. I don't just see what's beautiful. I fall for the other stuff. I love what's not perfect. It's just how I am.

Wendy: Maybe the day to day dirt is part of love.

Xavier: What's all this shit about love? How do we get so nuts? The time we waste! When you're alone, you cry, "Will I find her?" When you're not- "Does she love me as much as I love her?" "Can we love more than one person in a lifetime?" "Why do we split up? All these fucking questions! You can't say we're uninformed. We read love stories, fairy tales, novels. We watch movies. Love, love, love...!"

Xavier: If I think about all the girls I've known or slept with or just desired, they're like a bunch of Russian dolls. We spend our lives playing the game dying to know who'll be the last, the teeny-tiny one hidden inside all the others. You can't just get to her right away. You have to follow the progression. You have to open them one by one wondering, "Is she the last?"