in gardens all misty wet with rain.

I just re-discovered Jeff Buckley's cover of Van Morrison's "Sweet Thing."

Ssshhhhh.

Sleep tonight with dreams as sweet as angels wings.
And all your dreams will bring you sweeter things-
Sweet, sweet, sweet things.

In a time when things were much more simple, I used to dream that he would whisper those words in my ear as I fell asleep. I was lying down, propping my sunburned legs on a pillow in a house on the southern tip of Spain when the thought first entered my mind. Now that I've let it drift and flow so far away, I can't believe how at home it makes me feel, like it's already happened and I'm looking back on a memory that I created myself. Maybe, just maybe, I'll let myself dream again.

kitty in the freezer.

I can't believe that Rebecca is in France and that she won't be coming back until next year. I always knew that I would miss her, but now that it's here, it's like I never really knew how hard it would be. There is so much here in my new apartment and on campus that reminds me of her and I just wish there was some way to make the time go a little faster. Aw, man. Never let your roommate study abroad. Hold onto her! Don't let her go!

School is the same. I have class from 11am until 8pm on Thursdays with no break. My internship with the woman who is publishing (If) I Did It starts on Monday. I am exhausted from a night filled with dream-nightmares about my car breaking down in the middle of 101 on my way to Encino because I can't take it into the mechanic until Wednesday. Yep, pretty boring.

Also, I know it's totally lame, but The Office made my week. Jim and Pam. Blah blah. While that show is g.d. amazing, I find it incredibly disconcerting that I am so emotionally invested in a fake relationship. It seriously made me feel so warm inside. What the hell is wrong with me? I ask myself this every day.

cheesy commercials.

Flags over beds and charming smiles. In dark corners, I find myself sheltered in non-blankets, sheltered by the sounds of early birds and nighttime crickets. The dark and the light dance and entangle their limbs until I can no longer point to where one begins and another falls to nothing. Sore necks sung to comfort with a soft lullaby. The starts and stops make me lose myself in something that was never my own. Eyelids shut and sleep grabs me by the shoulders. One hour. Two. I forget to count. And then I sit up, my head pounding with the unwelcome consciousness of a headache.

all over the place.

Tomorrow begins a new school year. I'm already sick from stress. Not that I know what mono feels like or consists of, but I think I have mono. Also, not that I've done anything to give me mono, but I still think I have it.

I feel like my world is falling apart at the same time as it is coming back together to the way it was.

Other than that general feeling, I haven't had much time to think about anything. I've just been... living. And it feels amazing. But then when I come back to the way that I really am, the introspection and the planning and the lists and the worrying, I realize I have a long way to go.

But whatever, maybe everything will change this year.

I am reading Woody Allen's The Insanity Defense and it's like watching a whole bunch of shorts and it's just lovely.

short story.

I received a car today. I'm 19 and I've never had my own car. I think it's about time. However, if at some point in the next few days I stop updating my blog for weeks at a time, you can assume that I've injured myself badly in a car accident on the 405 and cannot use my fingers to type.

periodic table of the elements.

My friends and I drove to Santa Cruz yesterday afternoon. Today, we took a hike to a well-hidden river and sat on the rocks until the sun ran away from us. The water was cold, but I appreciated it. I even drank some of it, which I've been warned countless times not to do. I navigated my way through the water upstream and found a rock a few steps away from the boys - they were naked, mind you - to think for awhile. Nature tends to have that effect on me.

So I looked down at the water, up at the sky, to the sand where the lizards skimmed left and right. I tried to think. My mind wandered over Los Angeles, San Francisco, Burlingame, the USC campus, the Humanities Building, Bar 903, Killarney National Park, Fabric, the BHS pool, Daly City. It refused to stay put. So I discovered nothing, realized nothing. Only that nothing in my life could ever have been mapped out and charted. So thinking about it won't do me any good. I've always remembered the things I've chosen with my body better than the things I've chosen with my mind anyway.

evaporation.

You touch me, I hear the sound of mandolins.
And you kiss me. With your kiss my life begins.

Who is that addressed to? I'm still trying to figure it out.

3 am. The birds have flown away and left only people stumbling through the concrete and metal. A group of women with bunny ears crowds through the center of the square, laughing and singing. They are led by a blond woman in a white veil. Yells and laughter and then silence. That voice beside me fades.
Time passes. A return. The voice is loud again, standing, leaning on a railing that is connected to stairs which lead right to the heart of the square, where the women had once been. Innocence has been stripped away with the passing of time, there is no more hiding. Rushed, everything is running, sprinting laps around me. The people whoop and holler. My cares run away with them. The cigarette smoke clears. It will return.
But I will not. Not for years and years. Despite the tip toes and flashes of light and broken couches and brand name shoes.
St. Vincent Place is couched behind a maze of ten smaller streets. It's a mess of an alleyway, less of a street. I close the door outside #9 and see candles flicker. I hear voices laugh. I smell marijuana thick and sleepy. I leave one home to join another. It is an amicable parting as long as the voices and tastes and smells and colors and softness are erased.

orsay.

It's funny how I thought that Europe would make everything so clear. Instead, it just fucked with me even more. Now I feel unsettled and I also feel like I'm stuck in a paradox between craving freedom and craving intense intimacy.

Two nights ago, I was sitting on the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower drinking wine straight out of the bottle with one of my best friends. The tower was lit with the most awful green and yellow, celebrating one rugby defeat or another. We hung out with three guys who were traveling the world for 7 months, listening to their stories and sharing our adventures. When you meet other travelers, storytelling really becomes a swapping exercise: I'll tell you about sleeping in a train station in France, you tell me about the fjords in New Zealand. I'll tell you about the medieval graveyards of Ireland, you tell me about being threatened by a small Vietnamese man on a train to Southeast Asia.

Two nights ago. Forty-eight hours. And here I am again. My house hasn't changed one bit. My parents are the same, my friends the same. I feel like the whole world sat still while I spun around it. Or that I took some sort of time travel device and that the last two months never really occurred. Because, really, Europe didn't help me figure anything out. It only showed me how much I have yet to know.

And I really do think that I'm going to move to Ireland after I graduate, at least just for one summer. I'll live like a bum and love every minute. I can't stay in one place anymore. It hurts too much to just stand still.

catalan.

As I sat overlooking Barcelona today from my perch atop Park Güell - a Gaudi-designed park covered in a thick helping of mosaics and stone and modernism - I couldnt help feeling like I was back in the Bay Area on top of Coit Tower. To my right spanned a set of hills: South City. Below me rested a blanket of quiet urban landscape, sprinkled with high rises and windows and white-washed walls: the city itself, laid out in neat squares. Beyond that, the ocean hugged the shoreline: the San Francisco Bay. Five thousand miles away and still so close to home.